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THE ORTHOPTERA OF NORTHEASTERN AMERICA. 
BY 
W.S. BLATCHLEY. 
In 1885, when I was a sophomore at Indiana University, Dr. J. C. Bran- 
ner first taught me that an insect has six legs. About the same time I first 
learned through Dr. D. 8. Jordan that insects, birds and other animals have 
definite scientific names and that they can be arranged and classified into 
orders, families, genera, species, ete. 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 
MeNeill 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 haye 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. We 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 to 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 Orthoptera in- 
ereased. I collected them in all parts of the State, and between 1887 and 
1894, while living in Terre Haute, published 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 Locustidae, which were issued in the 
Proceedings of this Academy for the years 1892 and 1893. These were my 
first contributions to those Proceedings.. 
