THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 31 



fame which time can never obliterate. His grandfather was a physician 

 in Connecticut, and at his death his promising nephew, now eighteen 

 years of age, inherited his grandfather's medical library and a sufficient 

 legacy to enable him to acquire a medical education. He had made 

 arrangements to pursue his studies in Edinburgh, when the war with Great 

 Britain prevented him. About this time the medical department of Yale 

 University was opened, and young Kirtland was the first student on its 

 matriculation roll. Subsequently he graduated at the University of Penn- 

 sylvania, and in 1815 returned to his native place, where he practised 

 medicine for two years and a half, devoting all his leisure moments to the 

 study of natural science, for which he had developed a passion which 

 influenced all his after life. He next removed to Durham, Conn., where 

 he enjoyed an extensive practice for several years, when the death of his 

 wife and child again unsettled him, and he removed to Poland, Conn. 

 Five years later he was elected to the Legislature, where he served three 

 terms, after which he was called to fill the chair of Theory and Practice 

 of Medicine in the Ohio Medical College at Cincinnatti, which he did 

 with distinguished ability for five years, when the duties becoming irksome 

 to him, he resigned the position. 



When in 1848 the first Geological Survey of Ohio was organized, Dr. 

 Kirtland was appointed to superintend the natural history department, and 

 in due time presented a series of reports which attracted general atten- 

 tion. He labored diligently among the Fishes, Birds, Mollusks, Reptiles 

 and Insects of Ohio, sketching many of them with his own pencil and 

 describing them with an enthusiastic fidelity. During his researches he 

 collected a large and valuable cabinet of specimens with the design of 

 forming a State Collection, but Ohio refused the substantial aid which 

 this enterprise required, and as his collections had been made largely at 

 his own expense, he retained possession of them and they were ultimately 

 donated to the Cleveland Society of Natural Sciences, where they are now 

 treasured as a priceless heritage. 



In 1837 Dr. Kirtland had purchased a choice fruit farm five miles west 

 of Cleveland, and had there settled, as it proved, for the remainder of his 

 busy life. Four years after this he was appointed a Professor in the 

 Medical Department of the Western Reserve College, in Cleveland, a 

 position he filled with honor for twenty-one years. In 1861 Williams Col- 

 lege conferred upon him the degree of L L. D., in recognition of his 

 services, and many learned societies during his lifetime delighted to do 



