69 
standpoint. Mr. Thomas was able to employ several excellent assist- 
ants, and the six reports as a whole are very creditable to the State. 
The last of the six reports shows rather plainly the falling oft' in Mr. 
Thomas's interest in the subject of entomology. Its publication was 
coincident with the close of the work of the TJ. S. Entomological Com- 
mission, and it consists entirely of reports by Mr. D. W. Coquillett and 
Prof. G. H. French. After its publication Mr. Thomas transferred his 
labors to the field of ethnology, in which he had long been interested, 
and he is at the present time one of the able workers in the U. S. 
Bureau of Ethnology. 
Upon Mr. Thomas's withdrawal from office, Prof. S. A. Forbes, direc- 
tor of the State Laboratory of Natural History at Normal, 111., was 
appointed State entomologist, his commission dating July 3, 1882. 
Prof. Forbes' s attention had for some time been more or less engaged 
by questions relating to economic entomology. He has held office con- 
tinuously since that time, and has published six reports, the first one 
covering the remainder of the year 1882, the second the year 1883, the 
third the year 1884, the fourth the years 1885 and 1886, the fifth the 
years 1887 and 1888, and the sixth the years 1889 and 1890. Prof. 
Forbes's reports are among the best which have been imblished. They 
are characterized by extreme care and by an originality of treatment 
which has seldom been equaled. The practical end is the one which 
he has kept mainly in view. His experiments with the arsenites 
against the codling moth and the plum curculio were the first careful, 
scientific experiments in this direction which were made, and his inves- 
tigations of the bacterial diseases of insects have placed him in the 
front rank of investigators in this line. His monographic treatment of 
the insects affecting the strawberry plant is a model of its kind, and the 
same may be said of his work upon the corn bill-bugs and of his studies 
of the chinch bug. In fact, whatever insect or group of insects has 
been the subject of his investigations, lie has attacked the problem in 
a thoroughly original and eminently scientific and practical manner. 
Prof. Forbes has been able to command the services of a very able corps 
of assistants, including Messrs. 0. M. Weed, H. Garman, F. M. Webster, 
John Marten, and G. A. Hart. 
Missouri. — In the session of 1867-'68 the legislature of Missouri 
passed an act establishing the office of State entomologist, and directed 
that the reports of this officer should be made to the State board of agri- 
culture. The first and only appointee to this position was Prof. C. V. 
Eiley, who had at that time become prominent as an entomologist through 
his writings in the Prairie Farmer, of Chicago, with which paper he had 
been for some time connected, and through his editorship, in associa- 
tion with Mr. B. D. Walsh, of the American Entomologist, of which one 
volume had then been published. He entered upon his duties April 1, 
1868, and published his first annual report in December of that year. 
From that date there followed annually eight additional reports, the 
ninth being submitted March 14, 1877, and covering the year 1876. 
