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the opinion that there is no snbject in which you, as amateur 

 or professional horticulturists, have a more direct, immediate, 

 or larger pecuniar}- interest than in entomology — the laws of 

 insect life, a discriminating knowledge of the forms and habits 

 of your insect friends and foes. * * * * Nq Q^e who has given 

 the subject any attention will question the truth of the state- 

 ment that the people of Illinois are to-day many millions of 

 dollars poorer by reason of noxious insects ; nor the additional 

 statement that a very large proportion of this loss might have 

 been averted by the labors of a competent entomologist with 

 a little means at his disposal. * * * 



"Let us hai'c a state entomologist ; and luckily we need not go 

 beyond the limits of our own state to find one of the most 

 competent character." 



This suggestion was approved by the society at this meet- 

 ing, and was followed the next year by the hearty endorse- 

 ment of its next president, who said, in his annual address : 

 "The lessons of the year are instructive, and strengthen the 

 coaiviction that fruit-growers had better give up the business, 

 or give more attention to the insects that are laying waste their 

 orchards. It is m,y belief that fully one half of the fruit trees 

 within the range of my acquaintance are suffering from dis- 

 eases wholly the result of insect ravages, and that more than 

 half of their fruits the past summer have been wasted from 

 the same cause." He expresses a desire for "a bureau of en- 

 tomology, to act independently until it shall be adopted by the 

 long-looked-far agricultural college, to be provided by the 

 state with all facilities for organizing and carrying on a sys- 

 tematic warfare upon these, so: far, triumphant enemies of the 

 farmer and the horticulturist." 



The resolution of the society upon this feature of the presi- 

 dent's address was expressed in the following emphatic form : 

 "Resolved, That we most urgently pray the honorable legis- 

 lature of our great state to appoint a state entomologist, that 

 agriculturists and horticulturists may not quite despair of ever 

 overcoming the giant insectivorous difficulties in the way of 

 success in their professions. As one eminently qualified, and the 



