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Volume 28, Number 3
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OBITUARY ROMUALDO FERREIRA D'ALMEIDA (1891-1969)
Romualdo Ferreira d'Almeida, son of Henrique Ferreira de Almeida and Izabel Pereira de Almeida, was born in Rio de Janeiro on 12 February 1891 and died there on 24 August 1969. He married Aida Moreira dos Santos and had four sons, Nelson, Nysio, Newton and Ney.
His life-long interest in butterflies started at an early age, as did his interest in music which he inherited from his father. His first earnings, which he soon spent on his collection, were frequently made by playing the organ in church.
Needing to have a reliable source of income, he applied for government service and was accepted as an assistant cleaner to the Director General of Post Offices on 15 February 1917. Three years later he was made a second class cleaner and on 14 April 1921 he was promoted to delivering mail, in a third class capacity; he was promoted to the second class on 24 December 1934.
He thus worked every afternoon in order to have a reliable, if modest, source of income, and left the mornings free to dedicate himself to his passionate interest. His collection, at first very small due to lack of space and working conditions, and done without any outside help whatsoever, grew slowly. Because of his lack of support in Brazil, he
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started corresponding with entomologists in other countries, first in France and Germany and later throughout the world. In Brazil he remainded unrecognized and rejected by all the research institutions which he contacted, until a friend of his, Sr. J. Pinto, a photographer at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro, introduced him to Dr. Lauro Pereira Travassos, also of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute, in 1933. Despite having 24 publications in French and German, Romualdo F. d'Almeida had been ignored for 20 years. Dr. Travassos, a specialist in helminths and Lepidoptera, soon realized that he was dealing with someone worthy of recognition, and thus, with the support of the influential deputy, Arthur Neiva, arranged for Romualdo F. d'Almeida to deliver the mail within the Oswaldo Cruz Institue. Here, with good working conditions, equipment, a specialized library, and a suitable atmosphere to work in, he was able to improve and increase his output. He gave up delivering mail. Here he wrote his largest and best-known works, the revisions of the genus Eurema (Pieridae), the genus Actinote (Nymphalidae) in the southeast of Brazil, and on the family Danaidae; he also worked out his plans for the research that he was to do throughout his life. From this time on, Romualdo F. d'Almeida was recognized and respected in Brazil.
In 1937, he had the opportunity of accompanying the border Commission (northern sector), led by Commander Braz Dias de Aguiar, when an outstanding collection of butterflies was made in the area of the Cumina and Trombetas rivers in Para. Another important expedition, made only shortly before he died, was to the Amapa Territory in 1967; this was at his own expense and he spent all of the small amount of money which he possessed.
He remained at the Oswaldo Cruz Institute until 1 December 1940, officially delivering letters but in practice studying butterflies. From 2 December on, at the invitation of Dr. Salvador de Toledo Piza, he was appointed as an assistant in the Zoology Department of the Secretary of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce for the State of Sao Paulo, and was thus under the directorship of Dr. Oliverio Pinto. This was the first time that he had been employed as a research worker. Here, not having a collection, with which he would have been much happier, his research was mainly bibliographical, including various aspects of nomenclature. He remained there until 4 July 1944, when he was transferred to an appointment as Assistant Naturalist at the Ministry of Education and Health, at the initiative of the director of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, Dr. Heloisa Alberto Torres.
On his return to Rio, he was able to go back to working on his own
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collection. Now, with a responsible job and a good salary, he was unfortunately at the end of his career, being already 53 years old; however he worked unceasingly until his retirement in 1967, and after this worked at home until the time of his death.
Without doubt Romualdo F. d'Almeida knew the Lepidoptera of South America better than anyone else. His scientific output was considerable and it is not known why his first publication in 1913 was only discovered in Brazil 20 years after it had been written. All this time he had been unknown, and had been forced to study Latin, French and German in order to write and publish his work. His works covered all groups of the Rhopalocera and some few Heteroc-era, mainly concerning nomenclature, systematics and biology. The group he was most interested in was the Ithomiidae but he never accomplished his ambition to revise this family. In spite of having had to struggle against so many difficulties, having had a large family, and having received little moral or material support, he was perhaps the most productive Brazilian entomologist. He left a collection of more than 27,000 specimens in excellent condition, almost all of which had been identified; he wrote 112 scientific publications, a list of which, with comments, will be published by F. Martin Brown in an early issue of this Journal.
The author had the pleasure of being a student of Romualdo d'Almeida between 1957 and 1969, during which period he visited Romualdo d'Almeida at home frequently, to learn about the morphology, systematics and biology of Lepidoptera. At this time, because of his poor health, he seldom left his house to go to the National Museum in Rio, and when he did, it was only to consult various books or to visit his friends. Even so, he would go to the field to collect something which might be of interest to his work and always used to be pleased when he found any species which he did not have in his collection, although this was a rare occurrence. He had a persistent character and did not like to ask favours from friends; he also hated bureaucracy and was in the habit of using the backs of official forms for writing his scientific papers. He used to work on his collection daily in his house and died putting the finishing touches to his bibliographic catalogue of the Ithomiidae.
He was a member of various scientific societies: The Lepidopterists' Society (of which he was vice president in 1952), corresponding member of the Sociedade entomologica Argentina; corresponding Academician of the Academia Chilena de Ciencias Naturales; corresponding member of Sociedade Entomologica de Chile; member of the Societe entomologique de France, from which he received the Alcides d'Orbigny prize in 1929;
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the Societe Linean de Lyon; L/Union de Entomologiste Beiges; International Entomologischer Verein, Frankfurt; and the Sociedade Brasileira de Entomologia, which dedicated a book to him in 1945. In 1950, Romualdo Ferreira cTAlmeida was awarded the medal of the "Oficial da Ordem Nacional do Merito" by Getulio Vargas, the President of Brazil, and later received the medal from President Eurico Gaspar Dutra.
I am grateful to Dr. Judith Smith of Universidade Federal do Parana, who kindly translated the text from Portuguese to English.
Prof. Olaf Mielke, Univ. Fed. Parana, Curitiba, Parana, Brazil.
EUREMA PROTERPIA (PIERIDAE) IN KANSAS
A female specimen of the Tailed Sulphur, Eurema proterpia Fabr., was taken seated on wild aster blossoms in a field near Rantoul Gap, nine miles east of Ottawa in Franklin County, Kansas, on 15 October 1973. I netted the specimen just a few feet away from a specimen of the Mexican Snout Butterfly, Libytheana carinenta (Cramer) which was also seated on the asters. Neither butterfly has ever been recorded in Kansas before and I presume both of them to be new state records (although carinenta was taken by the dozens in this area during the autumn of 1971). Both specimens were somewhat worn and are presumed to have been migrants entering the region from farther south. Both specimens will be deposited in the Los Angeles County Museum at Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California.
William H. Howe, 822 East Eleventh Street, Ottawa, Kansas 66067.