IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIKN'CF.S. 



schos ;iiul for ii few «-onerati()ns, at least, to live and inul- 

 ti])ly. 



Aside from th" ((ucstious of native spec-ies and of the dis- 

 tri!)nti()ii in tlic St:it(;, there is work for any number of in- 

 v^stiii'ators upon the life-histories and habits of our nati\'e 

 insects. There are hundreds, nay, I doubt not, thousands 

 of insects, native to the State, concerning- whose life history 

 Ave know the merest fraii-ment or nothino- whatsoever. Of 

 those which have 1)een studied the ones best known sec^n to 

 ])resent the i>-i-eat(!st numl>er of probhnns open for further 

 study. 



In the Crustacea we have a wealth of material which no 

 lowan has as yet seen tit to mine. Whik' doubtless owv fauna 

 ao-rees closely with that of Illinois or Minnesota, where this 

 o-roup has been studied more thorcmn-hly, it would be both 

 interestin<>' and useful for some student to oive the g-roup his 

 attention so far as to determine to what extent they are 

 identical. 



The moJIufdift of the State are receivina" the attention of 

 our worthy secretary, Prof. R. E. Call, and have been studied 

 also by Profs. Pratt, Witter, Pilsbry, Shimek and others. 

 We have as yet no complete faunal list, though the list by 

 Prof. Pratt^ and Prof. Call^ oiven for certain localities 

 cover |)retty well the fauna of the State in the g-roups treated . 



The economic relations they b;'ar to a(iuatic life and to 

 higher animals as the inteiinediate hosts for mimci'ous para- 

 sites renders t'.iem im|)ort int objects to study. 



Of worms we kno\\ comijaralixcly little. A few para- 

 sitic species and th" universal earth worm (which means 

 several genera and s[)ecies) have been studied, but unich i-c- 

 mains to be done. Darwin (in his admirable memoir on the 

 Earth-worm) has shown us [)lainly the great importance of 

 this apparently insigniticant animal, and other forms await 



6— Proc. Dav. Acad. Nat. Sci., Vd. 1.. p. i6^->7. 

 7— Bull. Des Moines Sci., Vol. 1., No. i. p. -67. 



