BIENiNIAL REPORT OF THE ILLINOIS STATE 

 LABORATORY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



To the Trustees of the University : 



Gentlemen: In conformity to the recommendation 

 of a special committee on the the status of the State 

 Laboratory of Natural History, whose report was made 

 to you June 8, 1892, and in anticipation of your action 

 on that recommendation, I beo- to submit the following 

 general report on the operations of the Laboratory 

 during- the two years just past. 



The functions of the Laboratory, as most recently de- 

 fined by the legislature, in the law of 1885, are the 

 making of a natural history survey of the State, the 

 supply of natural history specimens to the State mu- 

 seum, the State educational institutions, and the public 

 schools, and the publication of a systematic series of 

 reports on the zo(")looy and the cryptogamic botany of 

 the State. Its operations now cover, under authoriza- 

 tion of the same law, those of the State Entomologist, 

 which were described by the law establishing that office 

 in 1867 to be the investigation of the entomology of 

 the State (particularly the history of insects injurious 

 to horticulture and agriculture in IlHnois), the collec- 

 tion of a cabinet of insects to be deposited in the Fni- 

 versity of Illinois, and the preparation of biennial reports 

 of the entomological researches and discoveries made 

 at the office. 



The work of the estnl)lishment is further necessarily 

 guided to a considerable extent b^'the appropriation laws 

 in force; and by authority of these laws we are publish- 



