233 



THE OKTIIorTKKA OK .\( (UTIIIOASTF.RX AMERICA. 

 HY 



W. S. Blatciiley. 



In 1885, when I was a sophomore at Indiana University, Dr. J. C. Bran- 

 ner first tauglit me tliat an insect has six legs. Aliout tlie same time I first 

 learned tlirongh Dr. D. S. Jordan that in.sects, birds and other animals have 

 definite scientific names and that they can be arranged and classified into 

 orders, families, genera, species, etc. Previous to that time I had about as 

 much knowledge of or interest in such things as the king of Zululand has in 

 logarithms. 



While Dr. Branner was professor of Geology, he was at the same time 

 interested in Entomology, and in the spring term of 1885 formed a class in 

 that subject and gave lectures two or three times a week. Of the members 

 of that class I remember definitely but three, Chas. A. Bollman, Jerome 

 McNeill and myself. We three occasionally went forth and studied insects 

 at first hand. The 17-year locusts were on hand that spring and the first 

 insects I ever collected to keep were some of these, which I pinned on 

 ordinary pins and stuck on the walls of my room. I have a few of them yet. 



When once started, I soon saw the advantage of a private collection, one 

 that I could call my very own. so I secured a dozen empty cigar boxes, 

 split some corn pith and placed a layer in the bottom of each box, and 

 began to collect every thing from chiggers up to Cecropian moths. That 

 collection has gradually grown until now I live in the biggest "bug house" 

 in Indiana. 



As grasshoppers were common and easily collected. McNeill and I be- 

 came especially interested in them. He afterward kept up that interest 

 and in time published a number of valuable papers on the group. 



The great bugbear of our work was lack of literature. AVe could get 

 specimens, but at that time we could not make books. The University 

 library had burned in 1883, and in restocking its shelves the authorities did 

 not take kindly to bug books. We had access only to such works as Har- 

 ris' "Injurious Insects of Massachusetts", and Packard's "General Ento- 

 mology". I was working my way through college and had all I could do to 

 furnish fuel for my body, none to spare for expensive out of print works 

 on Entomology. On a trip <o Indianapolis in 1886. I happened upon a copy 

 of Thomas' "Acrididae of North America" in a second hand book store, 

 which for four bits became my personal property. I took it home and was 

 able from it to name the majority of my species of grasshoppers or. right- 

 fully, locusts. From that time on my interest in the order Ortliojjtera in- 

 creased. I collected them in all parts of the State, and between 1887 and 

 1894, while li\'iug in Terre Haute, puldished a series of papers on the 

 Acrididae of Indiana in the Canadian Entomologist. As the literature on 

 the other families of the order was widely scattered, I prepared works on 

 the Indiana Gryllidae, Blattidae and Loeustidae, which were issued in the 

 Proceedings of this Academy for the years 1892 and ISO."',. These were my 

 first contributions to those Proceedings. 



