62 



In 1883 the status of the State Laboratory was materially 

 changed by the appointment of its director to the office of State 

 Entomologist, then made vacant by the resignation of Dr. 

 Cyrus Thomas, — an appointment made and accepted with the 

 understanding that the work of the State Entomologist and 

 that of the State Laboratory of Natural History were to be 

 merged and managed as one. 



In 1884 the opportunity arose for a transfer of both the 

 State Laboratory and the Entomologist's offtce to the State 

 University at Urbana, a situation evidently more natural and 

 more promising for its future than association with a normal 

 school, and this transfer, arranged by friendly agreement of 

 all the parties concerned, was ratified by an act of the state 

 legislature approved June 27, 1885, which act is the present 

 fundamental law of the State Laboratory of Natural History. 



At the University it has remained for twenty-five years, nom- 

 inally controlled by the university Trustees, but practically in- 

 dependent in its management. The most notable fact of its 

 history was the opening, by joint arrangement with the Uni- 

 ersity in 1894, of a station on the Illinois River for the inves- 

 tigation of the biology of that stream, and the maintenance of 

 this station for continuous work during the five following years. 



The office of State Entomologist stands second in point of 

 origin and first in period of service, on the list of the state 

 agencies of scientific and economic research. Established by 

 law in 1867, it has been continuously maintained for forty-two 

 years — a longer period of activity, in fact, than that of tlie 

 geological survey, which, although estalished in 1851, was sus- 

 pended for twenty-eight years. It had its origin in an energetic 

 demand of the State Horticultural Society of Illinois, whose presi- 

 dent, Parker Earle, in 18G5, seems to have been the first to make 

 prominent i)ublic mention of the subject. In a meeting of the 

 society held at Normal, December 19 of that year, he says: 

 "And first, the appointment of a state entomologist. The time 

 has been in this state when it required some moral courage for 

 any one to advocate the appointment, and compensation from 

 the treasury, of an fjfficer t(j litok after the bugs, but I venture 



