110 THE REPORT OF THE No. 19 



On his father's side the family traced their descent to Hugo Grotius, the Dutch writer and 

 author uf De Veritate Religionis Christiana.', a theological text-book familiar to students a 

 generation ago. His father, who was born at Dantzic, in Prussia, where his half-brother was 

 Director of the Royal Academy, and a painter and etcher of eminence, was an only child by 

 the second marriage of his mother ; she was the daughter of a Lutheran clergyman, who at the 

 time was the highest ecclesiastical dignitary in Dantzig. The family name was originally 

 written "Grohte," and was changed to " Grote" by A,ct of Parliament, when the Professor's 

 father became an Englisli citizen. At the early age of seven our friend came to New York, 

 following his parents, who had made the voyage the year before, and had now decided 

 upon taking up their abode in the United States. His youth was passed on Staten Island, 

 where his father had bought a large farm, and becoming interested in real estate conceived the 

 idea of the Staten Island Railway, of which company he was the secretary and treasurer during 

 the period of its construction. The commercial panic of 1857, and the resulting depression of 

 business threw th3 enterpris3 into Mr. Vanderbilt's hands, and Mr. Grote's real estate invest- 

 ments turned out disastrously. Meanwhile young Grote had been preparing for Harvard 

 University, but was obliged by the straitened circumstances of the family to abindou his 

 prospective c-ireer ; later on he was enabled to go to Europe and completed his education on 

 the Continent ; after his return he received the degree of A.M. from Lafayette College, 

 Pennsylvania. 



From his earliest years Prof.'Grote was a student of nature, and his delight as a boy was 

 to roam through the woods and over the upland meadows of Staten Island. In his 

 " Hawk Moths of North America" he describes the joys of these rambles ; " the early dawn," 

 he writes, "is a profitable time for the collector of lepidoptera, who may then surprise the 

 moths on their tirst resting places after the fatigues of the night. On Staten Island my early 

 risiug was rewarded by many captures at the hour when the cat bird sings and betrays to none 

 but chosen ears her relationship to the many-tuned mocking bird of the south." Again, "col- 

 lecting at night has the drawback that one never knows wlien to stop and go home to 

 bod, seduced by the mysterious silence and shadowy vistas in the woods. Even when the moths 

 will no longer come to bait, one lingers, waiting for some revelation. The moon has 

 transformed the prospect, and in its Aveird light an uneasy spirit seizes one to adventure farther 

 yet. . . . Thus certain hours and places, lanes along which the green tiger beetle flew up 

 ever and anon before my boyish feet, marshalling the way that I should go, come back to me 

 again out of the years of my early studies, int<jxicating my memory. Poe says that joy is not 

 gathered twice in a life, as the roses of P:estum twice in a year. But I gathered then so much 

 that it lasts until now, when world-griefs hold me fast." 



At the age of twenty-one Prof. Grote published his first papers on new species of Noctuidai 

 in tlie Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences and of the American Entomological 

 ■^'^ciety of Philadeljihia, and soon after he corrected the proofs of his friend. Dr. A. S. 

 Packard's paper onL^nited States Bombycidte, while the author was absent at the seat of war in 

 the South. J'rom 1862 his contributions to Entomological literature succeeded each other 

 rapidly, and by the time he left America for Germany he had described a very large number of 

 genera and species, and was justly regarded as our chief authority on the nocturnal Lepidoptera 

 of North America. 



In 1880 Prof. Grote married a grand-daughter of Judge Johnson, of Charleston, S.C. ; she 

 died in Alabama on the birth of his second child after three years of happy married life. It 

 was fully ten years later when, in Germany, he was married a second time to Fraulein Minna 

 Ruyter, who, with several children, now survives him. 



During hia residence in Alabama, Prof. Grote studied the cotton worm, and brought the 

 subject before the public in a lecture ; he then went io Washington and tried to interest the 



