VIII 
INTRODUCTION. 
$2,500 of which was intended and used for the purchase of 
Walsh Collection of Insects, afterwards destroyed in the Chic; 
fire. 
The next special appropriation to the office was made as an it 
in the appropriation bill for the State Laboratory of Natural I 
tory at Normal for the years 1888 and 1884, by which $500 
annum was assigned to the office and incidental expenses of 
State Entomologist. 
No provision has ever been made for a library for the Entonn 
gist, or for a collection of the insects of the State for his use of 
than that required by law to be deposited with the State Industi 
University. 
The incidental association of the office of State Entomologist w 
that of Director of the State Laboratory of Natural History, broil; 
about by the appointment of the latter officer to the former office 
1882, has, however, given to the State Entomologist command 
the resources of the State Laboratory of Natural History, includ 
its entomological collections and library, and has enabled h 
since the above date, to draw upon the corps of assistants of t 
establishment for a large amount of important service. 
The scope and variety of the fourteen reports of this office 
sufficiently indicated by the voluminous lists and indexes necess 
to give convenient access to their contents. In volume they 
exceed the literature of the economic entomology of any other St; 
amounting in all to 2,158 pages, of which 104 have been con 
buted by Walsh, 419 by LeBaron, 1,187 by Thomas, and 648 
Eorbes. They may broadly be said to contain four classes or r 
ter,—(1) original contributions to entomology, chiefly prepared w 
reference to economic applications, characteristic especially of 
first four and the last three reports; (2) treatises on the ciassib 
tion of single orders of insects, as in the 5th and 6th Repv 
(Coleoptera), the 7th and 10th (Lepidoptera), the 8th (Homopi 
especially Aphides), and the 9th (Ortlioptera); (8) full summaries 
existing knowledge respecting the most important injurious inset 
as the Hessian fly and the army worm; and (4) monographs of 
the insect enemies of a single crop, as of the insects affecting 
strawberry, in the 13th report. 
Probably no one conversant with the facts can doubt that 
State Entomologists of Illinois have devoted themselves faithfi 
and with distinguished success (far, in fact, beyond their rat 
meager opportunities) to the “investigation of the Entomolog\ 
Illinois, and particularly to the history of the insects injurious 
the products of the agriculturists and the horticulturists of 
State.” 
Champaign, III., June 30, 1885. 
