632 The American Naturalist. [July 
America. It is one of the most important pieces of recent work done on 
the North American Orthoptera by American entomologists; for the 
Tryxalinz have been one of the least known though richest groups. 
The classification is an independent one and does not follow very closely 
Brunner’s general outline of the Tryxaline of the world given four 
years ago, and which contains a relatively small proportion of the 
genera recognized by McNeill. Altogether 75 species are entered, 
referred to 31 genera of which 11 are proposed as new. Only ten new 
forms are described which is an astonishingly small number for the 
country since several new forms have been found in the East within 
recent years and a great deal remains to be done even here. A full 
figure, generally with considerable additional detail, is given for each 
genus, but unfortunately the enlargement above nature is not indicated. 
This memoir places our small grasshoppers on a very different basis 
from that on which they stood before and the figures alone are a strik- 
ing addition to our means of study and determination — Psyche, Vol. 
VIII, No. 352. 
John L. Curtis.—Mr. John L. Kellogg in the Entomological 
News for April, 1897, in a sketch of the life of John L. Curtis says :— 
“ The name of Mr. Curtis is not familiar to entomologists but I wish that 
some particulars of the brave life of this student of entomology, may be 
known to those whose attention may be arrested by the unknown 
name. 
“John L. Curtis, of Oakland, Cal., died at twenty-five. During the 
twelve years preceding his death, his waking hours were passed in a 
wheeled chair. A paralytic affliction deprived him of the use of the 
muscles of body, legs and arms except those of his wrists and hands. 
His consolation and delight were found in the study of Natural history. 
After caring for and watching a solitary spider kept in confinement for 
several years, he began with earnest zeal the careful study of spiders. 
His friends sent them to him in such numbers that at times, he had sixty 
or seventy species under observation. Wheeled by a companion along 
hedge-rows he observed them in their natural homes and collected them. 
After three years of delighting, absorbing study his eyes so failed him, 
that he was limited during two years to one half hour a day to micro- 
scopic or minute examination. In the last two years of his life, his 
health failing constantly, he devoted himself exclusively to the observa- 
tion of the new spider described elsewhere in the News. He devised 
ingenious methods of feeding, housing and watering his spiders. He 
made exhaustive observations of their every habit and recorded all in 
