The author was the second son of Friedrich Valentine Melsheimer, the first active American entomologist. A country physician, naturalist and entomologist, who wrote a Catalogue of the Described Coleoptera of the United States, published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1853. Both he and his elder brother Johann Friedrich were correspondents of Thomas Say.

The treatise of 245 pages belongs in part to the American Entomological Society and was published in the Academy's Proceedings 1844-46, under the full title of Descriptions of new species of Coleoptera of the United States, in 7 parts.