6 



to corn not before understood, and discovered means of avoiding its 

 ravages; and made elaborate studies, by the method of dissection, of 

 the food and feeding habits of the snout beetles generally, throwing 

 light, by this means, on the most serviceable measures for preventing 

 their injuries to fruit. 



Botanical Work. • 



Studies of the fungi of Illinois — principally those known as 

 parasites,— causes of disease among plants and animals, — have been 

 carried continuously forward, chiefly, as heretofore, under the im- 

 mediate charge of Prof. T. J. Burrill. Large collections have been 

 made during the past two years, chiefly by the botanical assistant, 

 Mr. Waite, in Edwards, Wabash, Ogle, Lake, and Carroll counties; 

 and work of this description has gone forward, almost without 

 intermission, in the neighborhood of the Laboratory. 



An extremely destructive disease of broom-corn and sorghum, 

 due to bacterial infection, has been thoroughly worked out by 

 Prof. Burrill, and measures of avoiding its attack have been discov- 

 ered; and a study is well under way of a similar but more important 

 disease of Indian corn, found by us widely prevalent from Edwards 

 county to Kankakee county. 



Careful and elaborate studies are also in progress of the bacteria 

 and other plant parasites which we have found to cause contagious 

 disease among insects, — those of the chinch bug having been inves- 

 tigated with especial thoroughness. 



OFFICE WORK. 



The office assistants have been chiefly engaged on tlie corre- 

 spondence, in the preparation of the manuscript for the entomologi- 

 cal report and for the bulletins published since 1886, in proof read- 

 ing of these and of the volume on the ornithology of the State, — 

 the latter read twice because once destroyed by fire,— in the cata- 

 loguing and indexing of new books and periodicals received, in the 

 preparation of two elaborate bibliographies, — one including all the 

 entomological writings of our first two State Entomologists, Walsh 

 and LeBaron, and the other covering the literature of the chinch 

 bug, — in making the numerous charts, diagrams, and dratvings 

 used in illustration of lectures — especially those to farmers" insti- 

 tutes; in collecting from nearly nine hundred township assessors the 

 facts concerning chinch bug injury to the principal farm crops, in 



c ting from the assessors' reports for 3887 the acreage in each 



