130 



Illinois Natural History Survey Bulletin 



Vol. 27, Art. 2 



and exhibits, the Natural History So- 

 ciety itself faltered because it could not 

 make ends meet on private subscriptions 

 alone and by the end of the 1860's was 

 a mere shell of an organization. 



Expansion Period, 1871-1922 



The establishment of the State En- 

 tomologist's Office in 1867 and the in- 

 corporation of the Illinois Natural His- 

 tory Society into the State Board of Ed- 

 ucation in 1871 brought together as offi- 

 cial state organizations two agencies in- 

 vestigating natural science and marked 

 the beginning of continuing state support 

 for faunistic programs. 



The appointment of Walsh as first 

 State Entomologist had little effect on 

 this movement because Walsh confined 

 his official writings almost entirely to 

 nontaxonomic subjects. His successor, 

 William Le Baron, introduced serious 

 taxonomic contributions into the reports 

 of the State Entomologist in 1871. 



In his first report as State Entomolo- 

 gist, Le Baron described a new species 

 of moth attacking apple, in his second 

 described four more new species of in- 

 sects of economic importance, and in his 

 third gave an outline of and key to the 

 orders of Illinois insects (Le Baron 1871 : 

 20-3; 1872:117-24, 138-9, 140, 157-8; 

 1873:25). Here he called particular 

 attention to the great need for identifica- 

 tion aids in the pursuit of economic en- 

 tomology. Le Baron's was the first of 

 much faunistic work which continued as 

 an integral part of the development of 

 economic entomology in Illinois. At al- 

 most the same time (1871), the educa- 

 tors and scientists of the state, alarmed at 

 the continued decline of their Natural 

 History Society, induced the legislature 

 to take over and assign the Society's mu- 

 seum and library to the State Board of 

 Education in exchange for state appropria- 

 tions (Illinois General Assembly 1872: 

 151-2) for the Society's continued growth. 

 Thus, the need for state aid in the de- 

 velopment of faunistics arose from two 

 different directions. 



Both Le Baron and Thomas as State 

 Entomologists published many fine taxo- 

 nomic insect studies in their reports. Un- 

 der the auspices of the Illinois Museum of 

 Natural History, naturalists in the state 



published faunistic papers on a wide range 

 of Illinois groups, including Crustacea, 

 fish, birds, reptiles, and insects. 



The period 1858-1878 witnessed the 

 first concerted awakening of American 

 naturalists to the taxonomic opportunities 

 in the invertebrates, especially in the in- 

 sects. Specialists in many states published 

 comprehensive treatises on orders or fam- 

 ilies of insects of North America. For 

 these animals, this was truly the age of 

 North American discovery. 



In 1877 the Museum of the Natural 

 History Society, by that time known as 

 the Illinois Museum of Natural History, 

 was separated into two institutions : the 

 Natural History Museum, designed as 

 a public exhibition museum, in Spring- 

 field, and the State Laboratory of Nat- 

 ural History, at Normal (Illinois Gen- 

 eral Assembly 1877:14-6). The duties 

 of the State Laboratory, presumably as 

 set forth by Stephen A. Forbes, its Di- 

 rector, stressed ecological approaches to 

 the animal life of the state and in this 

 policy reflected thoughts expressed by 

 Turner 20 years before. The primary in- 

 tent of the systematic program described 

 was "to monograph those groups which 

 have not been thoroughlv studied else- 

 where" (Forbes 1882«:9). 



In 1882 Forbes became State Entomol- 

 ogist, as well as Director of the State 

 Laboratory. Following the establish- 

 ment of both of these offices at Urbana 

 in 1885, the faunistic program received 

 great impetus. Reading between the lines 

 of the original reports of the Director, 

 it seems safe to surmise that by this time 

 the ecological studies already attempted 

 had highlighted the pressing need for the 

 accurate identification of the animal spe- 

 cies encountered in these studies. In the 

 revised list of duties of the State Labora- 

 tory we find the directive, "he [the Di- 

 rector] shall present for publication, 

 from time to time, a series of systematic 

 reports covering the entire field of the 

 zoology ... of Illinois" (Illinois Gen- 

 eral Assembly 1885:23). In its Bulletin. 

 the Laboratory had previously published 

 many papers by nonstaff members, but 

 from this time on a larger and larger pro- 

 portion of these papers was the product 

 of staff members of the State Laboratory 

 or of the State Entomologist's Office. 



