﻿PREFACE. 



occupied with the study of not one or two, but of hundreds of species, many of them 

 local in character. In cases, as with the Locust, the Chinch Bug, the Cotton Worm, 

 etc., where the evils are of a national character, a national Commission, appointed for 

 the express purpose of their investigation, and consisting of competent entomologists, 

 botanists and chemists, is necessary, and should be demanded ; and I am glad that pre- 

 liminary steps have been taken by some of our leading scientific men to memoralize 

 Congress to create such a Commission, the members to be chosen by the Council of the 

 National Academy of Science, and approved by the Secretary of the Treasury. 



VV^e have, it is true, a Department of Agriculture which, if under intelligent and 

 scientific control, might employ the large sums it now fritters awaj' in the gratuitous 

 distribution of seeds, to better advantage in organizing and sending out such a Com- 

 mission ; but the people have lost all hope of getting much good out of that institution 

 as at present organized, or so long as the character of its head and management de- 

 pends on political whim or fancy. 



I have referred in previous years to the binding and distribution of the Entomolo- 

 gical Keport, and suggested that improvements might be made in the law. In some 

 respects the new law, already referred to, is a great improvement on the old one, and 

 will have a tendency to bring these reports before the farmers, in a manner in which 

 they have not been brought before them in past years, if we may judge from the expe- 

 rience of the many whose letters I partly publish in the Chinch Bug Appendix. My 

 f)th Report was published last April, and a word or two as to its distribution may not 

 be out of place. At the approach of Summer it began to be rumored, and it finally be- 

 came manifest, that your late Corresponding Secretary, Mr. J. F, Wielandy, decided 

 not to publish a report. As mine is bound in by law with that of your secretary, and 

 I did not wish it to lay the whole year at the bindery, I took measures to have it bound 

 and distributed separately, and, after conferring with the Governor and Secretary of 

 State, and the officers of the Board, and getting the sanction of my intended course 

 from each individual member of the Board, it was so ordered bound and distributed. 



At the request of a committee appointed by the Board of Curators of our State 

 University to confer with me on the subject, I agreed a year ago to prepare a collection 

 of insects for the use of the Agricultural Department of that Institution. During the 

 year I have devoted what little time 1 could spare, and all the time of an assistant, Mr. 

 Lugger, not absolutely needed in other dii-ections, to the preparation of this cabinet, 

 which I took to Colunibia last December, and delivered to the College. It con- 

 sists of sixty drawers, 12 by IG inches, with a depth of 2^- inches inside, and lined 

 with cork and ruled paper — the drawers being of pine wood with cedar fronts, and the 

 cabinet itself being of oiled walnut. It contains types of the principal insects of the 

 State, with figures, in many instances, of their adolescent stages. These insects are all 

 carefully mounted and properly classified, with printed, ordinal, family, generic and 

 specific names attached, and where the species have been treated of in my Reports, there 

 are references made to the particular Report and the particular figure. The whole 

 forms a type collection intended for the instruction of the students, and to illustrate my 

 lectures before the entomological class at the University ; and in each drawer there is 

 room left for the addition of specimens that may be collected by the students. 



In these busy, stirring days, there are few men who get time to read through a Re- 

 port on any specialty — even among those for whom such a report is more particularlj' 

 intended. In the work herewith submitted there will be found matter that will in- 

 terest the scientific as well as the practical man ; and, fully appreciating the truth of 



