BIENNIAL REPORT OF THE ILLINOIS STATE 
LABORATORY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
To the Trustees of the University : 
. GENTLEMEN: In conformity to the recommendation 
of a special committee on the the status of the State 
Laboratory of Natural History, whose report was made 
to you June 8, 1892, and in anticipation of your action 
on that recommendation, I beg to submit the following 
general report on the operations of the Laboratory 
during the two years just past. 
_ The functions of the Lavoratory, as most recently de- 
fined by the legislature, in the law of 1885, are the 
making of a natural history survey of the State, the 
supply of natural history specimens to the State mu- 
seum, the State educational institutions, and the public 
schools, and the publication of a systematic series of 
‘Teports on the zodlogy and the cryptogamic botany of 
the State. Its operations now cover, under authoriza- 
tion of the same law, those of the State Entomologist, 
which were described by the law establishing that office 
in 1867 to be the investigation of the entomology of 
the State (particularly the history of insects injurious 
to horticulture and agriculture in Illinois), the collec- 
tion of a cabinet of insects to be deposited in the Uni- 
versity of Illinois, and the preparation of biennial reports 
of the entomological researches and discoveries made 
at the office. 
The work of the establishment is further necessarily 
guided to a considerable extent by the appropriation laws 
in force; and by authority of these laws we are publish- 
ae 
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