PREFACE. 
HE act of the legislature of Alabama, approved April 
18, 1873, “To revive and complete the geological and 
agricultural survey of Alabama,” has from the first been 
construed to include, as related to agriculture and there- 
fore legitimately a part of the survey work, the investi- 
gation of the fauna and flora of the State. In the pre- 
face of my first report, 1874, I have outlined the scope of a 
complete report of this survey to include, 
I. Physical Geography. 
II. Geology and Paleontology. 
III. Economic Geology. 
IV. Agricultural Relations, and 
V. Botany and Zoology, 
and the reports of the Survey from year to year have 
covered more or less in detail all of these subjects. 
Collections of the native plants of this State, begun in 
1873 and continued since, have resulted in the accumula- 
tion of a fairly complete herbarium of the plants growing 
without cultivation in Alabama, and the publication of the 
classical work of Dr. Charles Mohr “The Plant Life of 
Alabama.” Additional notes on the flora of the State have 
been published in most of the Survey reports up to the 
present time. 
Naturally the insects injurious to vegetation and the 
birds and other animals which prey upon them, or which 
are themselves directly destructive of vegetation, must 
be considered in any reasonably complete account of the 
agricultural features of the State. 
In my report for 1875 was published a preliminary 
paper on the cotton worm by Prof. A. R. Grote, and in 
the 1876 report, A Preliminary List of the Fresh Water 
Shells of the State, by Mr. James Lewis. 
We have now in manuscript ready for publication, a 
similar list of the Reptiles and Batrachiaus of Alabama 
by H. P. Loding of Mobile, and the present report con- 
