90 



Illinois Natural History Survey Bulli-tin 



Vol. 27, Art. 2 



specific and forthright resolution (Revn- 

 olds 1868:18): 



Resolved, That whenever a sum of fifteen 

 hundred dollars ($1,500) shall have been 

 obtained, by legislative action or otherwise, 

 for an annual salary, this Board will then 

 appoint a competent scientific man as State 

 Entomologist. 



Rcsoh'ed, That Mr. B. D. Walsh be and he 

 is hereby appointed State Entomologist, sub- 

 ject to the preceding resolution. 



The legislature listened to these pleas 

 and in 1867 passed a law which author- 

 ized the Governor, with the consent of the 

 Senate, to appoint a state entomologist. 

 The work of this officer was considerably 

 handicapped. \Vhile he was voted a salary, 

 he was given no work fund, and the first 



three persons t<j hold the position main- 

 tained their offices in their homes or in 

 offices devoted to other purposes. The job 

 was a difficult one, and Forbes (1915: 

 7-8) once rather facetiously wrote: 



He [Walsh] performed as well as he could 

 his various duties of private, captain, colonel, 

 adjutant, and major-general of this new- 

 force — and in two years he was dead. He 

 had two successors enlisted for the war on 

 precisely the same terms, the first of whom, 

 Dr. Wm. Le Baron, of Geneva, Hlinois, main- 

 tained for five years the unequal contest, 

 when he also died ; and the second, Dr. Cyrus 

 Thomas, of Carbondale, abandoned the field 

 in despair after seven years of diligent serv- 

 ice, going then to Washington for work in 

 another department of science, where he lived 

 to the good old age of eighty-five. I have 

 sometimes wondered if his long survival was 



Benjamin Dann Walsh, State Entomologist, 1867-1869. 



