6 
FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 
State Entomologist for the whole period of two years for which the 
appointment was tenable, and to trust to the future liberality of 
the Legislature to reimburse me for my work. 
I therefore, shortly after returning home from the State Fair, 
took care that the people of Illinois should be informed unofficially 
through the Public Press of the course that I had determined on ; 
and I further, by the advice of friends, notified the Governor 
officially of what I proposed to do. I also informed your Presi¬ 
dent, both by letter and personally, that I did not ask any pecuniary 
assistance whatever for the present from your Society ; but that, if 
the Senate failed to confirm my appointment in the Regular Session 
of 1868-9, then, and then only, I purposed to call upon your 
Society for the payment of the sum, which had been so liberally 
appropriated in the first instance to meet a temporary necessity. 
This whole matter is so complicated, and the misunderstandings 
respecting it have been so general, that I hope that I shall be 
excused for the publication of all these egotistical details. In 
justice to the Society, and in justice to myself, I could not well say 
less; and I have felt throughout, and still feel, a repugnance to 
thrusting myself forwards — without explanation or apology — to 
undertake functions, to the performance of which I am not legally 
and officially called. Time will show whether the people of this 
great State will endorse and approve what I am doing; or whether 
I am to be treated as an impudent pretender, who has been assum¬ 
ing a title to which he has no legitimate claim whatever. 
The law authorizing the appointment of a State Entomologist 
makes it one of his duties to prepare an Annual Report of his re¬ 
searches and discoveries, for publication by the State. Under 
existing circumstances, I have thought that the most appropriate 
mode of carrying out the spirit, though not the letter, of the law 
upon this point was to offer this my First Annual Report for pub¬ 
lication in the Transactions of your Society. 
In preparing this document, I have aimed to use only such 
language, as will be intelligible to any one who has had a good 
Common School education, with one single exception. I have 
throughout, after giving the English names of insects, added the 
scientific names, printed in italics and enclosed in a parenthesis 
( ). The general reader will find the sense always complete with- 
