9 
Equally flattering comments were made upon the entomo- 
logical features of the exhibit by economic entomologists, both 
American and foreign, the collection of apple insects especially, 
and that exhibiting the food of a single robin for one year, attract- 
ing wide attention. 
The entire mass of this material, excepting only a few birds 
borrowed from the museum of the University and seventy-one 
specimens from that of the State Department of Agriculture, 
was, at the close of the Exposition, transferred by the State 
World’s Fair Commissioners to the Illinois State Laboratory of 
Natural History and removed to Champaign. The ornitholog- 
ical collection thus acquired I have placed in the museum of the 
University so far as the cases there will contain them, and the 
remaining material is now in in the collection rooms of the State 
Laboratory, in the basement of Natural History Hall. 
THE EXPOSITION AQUARIUM. 
This is the proper place to mention also a very important 
gift made to the Laboratory by the United States Commissioner 
of Fish and Fisheries, Hon. Marshall McDonald, at the close of 
the Exposition. As the attendant circumstances were imper- 
fectly understood at the time by the public at large, it seems 
desirable to place on record here a correct account of this 
transaction. 
Under your authorization, as recorded in your Proceedings 
for November 16, 1892, I accepted an appointment as Director 
of the Aquarium Exhibit of the Commission at the Columbian 
Exposition, taking charge January 1, 1893, and continuing 
to serve in that capacity to the close of the Exposition, 
October 31. At this latter date the living inmates of the 
Aquarium comprised representatives of fifty-two species of 
marine and sixty-two species of fresh water animals, about 2,500 
specimens in all. 
It was the earnest wish and hope of the Commissioner and 
myself that the maintenance of this live exhibit at the Exposi- 
tion—of which it was throughout one of the most attractive 
features—might result in the establishment at Chicago of a per- 
manent aquarium and biological station, and to this end I was 
authorized in October to offer the contents of the tanks in the 
Aquarium Building, with some unimportant exceptions, first to 
