VIII INTRODUCTION. 



$2,500 of which was intended and used for the purchase of the 

 Walsh Collection of Insects, afterwards destroyed in the Chicago 

 fire. 



The next special appropriation to the office was made as an item 

 in the appropriation bill for the State Laboratory of Natural His- 

 tory at Normal for the years 1883 and 1884, by which $500 per 

 annum was assigned to the of&ce and incidental expenses of the 

 State Entomologist. 



No provision has ever been made for a library for the Entomolo- 

 gist, or for a collection of the insects of the State for his use other 

 than that required by law to be deposited with the State Industrial 

 University, 



The incidental association of the office of State Entomologist with 

 that of Director of the State Laboratory of Natural History, brought 

 about by the appointment of the latter officer to the former office in 

 1882, has, however, given to the State Entomologist command of 

 the resources of the State Laboratory of Natural History, including 

 its entomological collections and library, and has enabled him, 

 since the above date, to draw upon the corps of assistants of this 

 establishment for a large amount of important service. 



The scope and variety of the fourteen reports of this office are 

 sufficiently indicated by the voluminous lists and indexes necessary 

 to give convenient access to their contents. In volume they far 

 exceed the literature of the economic entomology of any other State, 

 amounting in all to 2,f58 pages, of which 104 have been contri- 

 buted by Walsh, 419 by Leliaron, 1,187 by Thomas, and 648 by 

 J^'orbes. They may broadly be said to contain four classes ot mat- 

 ter, — (1) original contributions to entomology, chiefly prepared with 

 reference to economic applications, characteristic especially of the 

 first four and the last three reports ; (2) treatises on the classifica- 

 tion of single orders of insects, as in the 5tli and 6th Reports 

 (Coleoptera), the 7th and 10th (Lepidoptera), the 8th (Homoptera 

 especially Aphides), and the 9th (Orthoptera) ; (3) full summaries of 

 existing knowledge respecting the most important injurious insects, 

 as the Hessian fly and the army worm ; and (4) monographs of all 

 the insect enemies of a single crop, as of the insects affecting the 

 strawberry, in the loth report. 



Probably no one conversant with the facts can doubt that the 

 State Entornologists of Illinois have devoted tberaselves faithfully 

 and with distinguished success (far, in fact, beyond their rather 

 meager opportunities) to the "investigation of the Entomology of 

 Illinois, and particularly to the history of the insects injurious to 

 the products of the agriculturists and the horticulturists of the 

 State." 



Champaign, III., June 30, 1885. 



