INTRODUCTION. 



[Second Report.] 



To His Excellency, John M. Palmer, 



Qovernor of the State of Illinois : 

 I Sir — I herewith transmit my second annual report upon the Noxious 



Insects of Illinois. 

 I A few words are necessary, by way of introduction and explanation. 

 It is perhaps generally known to those who take an interest in such 

 matters that the whole of the first edition of the first annual report, 

 I —comprising five thousand copies — was burnt, in company with otlier 

 ! state documents, in the public bindery, at Springfield, on the 23d of 

 February, 1871. Near the close of its session, the General Assembly 

 j ordered the reprint of a part of these documents, and amongst others, 

 the report of the State Entomologist. This reprint was made in the 

 j month of August, from a single copy, which was the only one that hap- 

 j pened to be preserved, the manuscript also having been mislaid and 

 I lost. The printing was done without the supervision of the author, 

 and though for the most part correct, a considerable number of slight 

 verbal errors were overlooked which, so far as they have been detected, 

 have been corrected under the head of errata^ at the end of this re- 

 port. 



In the introduction to that report I stated my intention, as soon as 

 Ithe work of preparing it was off my hands, to devote my time for the 

 remainder of the winter, to assorting and labeling the duplicates in the 

 fWalsh collection and my own, with the view of furnishing a suite of 

 Ithe insects of the State for the Industrial University, in compliance 

 with one of the requirements of the law by which the office of State 

 iEntomologist was created. Accordingly, the greater part of the win- 

 ter was devoted to this work, and the labeling of the specimens in the 

 two most extensive Orders — the Coleoptera and the Lepidojpt^ra — was 

 completed. It was my intention to go through with the other Orders 



