NOTE, 



A recent opinion of the Attorney General makes it doubtful 

 whether the State Entomologist of Illinois has a right, under the 

 laws referring to that office (to some extent inconsistent and con- 

 flicting), to prepare any other than a biennial report ; and a change 

 in practice of the State Board of Contracts leaves no doubt what- 

 ever that a report published this year could not be illustrated. As 

 an elaborate monograph of insects injurious to Indian corn was in- 

 tended as the principal part of my entomological report for 1885, 

 and as this article certainly should not be published without a large 

 number of excellent figures, I have decided, under existing circum- 

 stances, not only to withhold this paper, but also to refrain from 

 presenting any formal report for 1885, leaving it to the State Legis- 

 lature to provide for the proper illustration of the reports hereafter, 

 and to remove the present inconsistencies of the law. Unwilling, 

 however, that the work of the office for the past year should be without 

 representation in the Transactions of the State Board of Agriculture, 

 with which the entomological report has been annually published for 

 the last ten years, I have submitted to the Board, at the request of 

 its Secretary, C. F. Mills, Esq., the following miscellaneous essays 

 on economic entomology, summarizing the results of such part 

 of our operations as may well be published without cuts. 



A running account of the principal entomological events and ob- 

 servations of the year is followed by a somewhat elaborate report 

 of experiments with insecticides for the codling moth and curculios 

 in apple orchards ; other articles are offered presenting the results 

 of recent observations and experiments upon the corn plant louse, 

 upon some of the most destructive of our common grasshoppers, 

 and upon a miscellaneous series of insects of Livingston county; 

 and a list of corn insects with a bibliography of the economic 

 literature relating to them is also published as an introduction to a 

 monograph on insects affecting corn, to be presented hereafter. 



S. A. FOKBES, 



State Entomologist. 

 University of Illinois, March 1, 1886. 



