ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 91 



of economic entomology for the State of Illinois, including in this report the portion 

 relating to the Coleoptera. In his second report his assistant, Mr. G. H. French, 

 treated of the Lepiilopterw, and in his third report Mr. Thomas treated the Hemiptera, 

 monographing the AphididcW. His fourth report included a consideration of one 

 family of the Orthoptera, namely, the Acridiida-, and the fifth a paper on the larvw 

 of Lepidoptera, by his assistant, Mr. D. W Coquillet, while in his sixth he was 

 obliged, from the force of circumstances to abandon the scheme. The manual of 

 economic entomology of Illinois remains, therefore, unfinished. In the course of the 

 six reports a very large number of insects are treated from the economic standpoint. 

 Mr, Thomas was able to employ several excellent assistants, and the six reports as a 

 whole are very creditable to the State. The last of the six reports shows rather 

 plainly the falling off' in Mr. Thomas's interests in the subject of entomology. Its 

 publication was coincident with the close of the work of the U S. Entomological Com- 

 mission, and it consists entirely of reports by Mr D. W. Ooquillett and Prof. G. H. 

 French. After its publication Mr. Thomas transferred his labors to the field of 

 ethnology, in which he had long been interested, and he is at the present time one 

 of the able workers in the XJ. S. Bureau of Ethnology. 



Upon Mr. Thomas's withdrawal from office, Prof. S. A. Forbes, director of the State 

 Laboratory of Natural History, at Normal, Illinois , was appointed State entomologist, 

 his commission dating July 3, 1882. Prof. Forbes's attention had for some time been 

 more or less engaged t)y questions relating to economic entomology. He has held office 

 continuously since that time, and has published six reports, the first one covering the 

 remainder of the year 1882, the second the year 1883, the third the year 1881, the fourth 

 the years 1885 and 1886, the fifth the years 1887 and 1888, and the sixth the years 1889 

 and 1890. Prof. Forbes's reports are among the best which have been published. They 

 are characterized by extreme care and by an originality of treatment which has seldom 

 been equalled. The practical end is the one which he has kept mainly in view. His 

 experiments with the arsenites against the codling moth and the plum curculio were the 

 first careful scientific experiments in this direction which were made, and hts investiga- 

 tions of the bacterial diseases of insects have placed him in the front rank of investigators 

 in this line. His monographic treatment of the insects affecting the strawberry plant is a 

 model of its kind, and the same maybe said of his work upon the corn bill-bugs and of 

 his studies of the chinch bug. In fact, whatever insect or group of insects has been the 

 subject of his investigations, he has attacked the problem in a thoroughly original and 

 eminently scientific and practical manner. Prof. Forbes has been able to command the 

 services of a very able corps of assistants, including Messrs. M. Weed, H. Garman, 

 F. M Webster, John Marten, and 0. A. Hart. 



Missouri. In the session of 1867-'68 the legislature of Missouri passed an act 

 establishing the office of State entomologist, and directed that the reports of this officer 

 should be made to the State Board of Agriculture. The first and only appointee t > this 

 ' position was Prof. (J V. Rilf'y, who had at that time become prominent as an entomo- 

 logist through his writings in the "Prairie Farmer," of Chicago, with which paper he had 

 been for some time connected, and through his editorship, in association with Mr. B. D. 

 Walsh, of the "American Entomologist," of which one volume had then been published. He 

 enterKi upon his duties April 1, 1868, and published his first annual report in December 

 of that year. From that date there followed annually eight additional reports, the ninth 

 being submitted March 14, 1877, and covering the year 1876. 



There is no need of any comment upon these nine Missouri reports before any body 

 of economic or scientific entomologists. They are monuments to the State of Missouri, 

 and more especially to the man who wrote them. They are original, practical, and 

 scientific , they cover a very great range of injurious insects, and practically all the 

 species which were especially injurious during those nine years received full and careful 

 treatment. They may be said to have formed the basis for the new economic entomology 

 of the world, and they include a multitude of observations and intelligent deductions 

 which have influenced scientific thought. The value to the agriculturist, as well as to the 



