190 Psyche [December 



territories; and finally, in later years, gifts, exchanges, and loans 

 from his colleagues supplied him with a large amount. Being 

 for many years almost the only authority on the group he was 

 naturally the recipient of a very large proportion of the new forms 

 discovered, so that his collection inevitably became, with his 

 continued activity and relative absence of competitors, extremely 

 rich in types. It needs revision in many particulars, still contains 

 much unworked material, and is losing its relative importance 

 owing to the cessation of activity directly connected with it and 

 the development of collections elsewhere, but historically it must 

 remain a most important collection of American Orthoptera. 



Mr. Scudder worked rapidly — too rapidly for accurate results 

 sometimes; but in no other way could he have accomplished 

 so much. Once, on remarking to him in connection with some of 

 my own studies that if one worked rapidly he was liable to make 

 errors, he rejoined with emphasis, "Sure to, sure to!" In the 

 early period of his activity he was perhaps prone to draw conclu- 

 sions from too limited a supply of material, but that was the custom 

 of the time quite as much as of the man. In later years, with 

 long series before him, he often worked with selected examples 

 of the species he had tentatively discriminated, instead of with 

 the series as a whole. This method, though economizing time, 

 provided the possibility of numerous errors, from which he did 

 not wholly escape. No one, however, was ever more ready to 

 acknowledge and rectify' mistakes when called to his attention.^ 



Mr. Scudder frequently said that he was unable to draw, and 

 regretted his inability to express by this means the characters 

 which he observed. Perhaps the fact that he felt a difficulty, 

 thus acknowledged, may account in part for that experienced by 

 others in following some of his work. 



No systematist can judge correctly the work of another without 

 actually studying the material upon which his conclusions were 

 based and bearing in mind his experience and personal knowledge 

 at the time. It is a genuine pleasure to follow a great leader, one 



' It seems well to take this opportunity to correct the erroneous measurements of certain 

 species described by Mr. Scudder in his "Materials" which have caused much perturbation 

 among later workers. He once told me that in measuring he then used a scale other than the 

 inch, which needed correction to give the right dimensions. Some of the figures failed to receive 

 correction and need to be multiplied by two to give the right measurement. (See Qryllus 

 spp., Tettix triangularis.) 



