6 
to corn not before understood, and discovered means of avoiding its 
ravages; and made elaborate studies, by the method of dissection, of 
the food and feeding habits of the snout beetles generally, throwing ~ 
light, by this means, on the most serviceable measures for preventing 
their injuries to fruit. 
Botanical Work. 
Studies of the fungi of [Jlinois—principally those known as 
parasites,—causes of disease among plants and animals,—have been 
carried continuously forward, chiefly, as heretofore, under the im- 
mediate charge of Prof. T. J. Burrill. Large collections have been 
made during the past two years, chiefly by the botanical assistant, 
Mr. Waite, in Edwards, Wabash, Ogle, Lake, and Carroll counties; 
and work of this description has gone forward, almost without 
intermission, in the neighborhood of the Laboratory. 
An extremely destructive disease of broom-corn and sorghum, 
due to bacterial infection, has been thoroughly worked out by 
Prof. Burrill, and measures of avoiding its attack have been discov- 
ered: and a study is well under way of a similar but more important 
disease of Indian corn, found by us widely prevalent from Edwards 
county to Kankakee county. 
Careful and elaborate studies are also in progress of the bacteria 
and other plant parasites which we have found to cause contagious 
disease among insects,—those of the chinch bug having been inves- 
tigated with especial thoroughness. 
OFFICE WORK. 
The office assistants have been chiefly engaged on the corre- 
spondence, in the preparation of the manuscript for the entomologi- 
cal report and for the bulletins published since 1886, in proof read- 
ing of these and of the volume on the ornithology of the State,— 
the latter read twice because once destroyed by fire,—in the cata- 
loguing and indexing of new books and periodicals received, in the 
preparation of two elaborate bibliographies,—one including all the 
entomological writings of our first two State Entomologists, Walsh 
and LeBaron, and the other covering the literature of the chinch 
bug,—in making the numerous charts, diagrams, and drawings 
used in illustration of lectures—especially those to farmers’ insti- 
tutes; in collecting from nearly nine hundred townsbip assessors the 
facts concerning chinch bug injury to the principal farm crops, in 
acting from the assessors’ reports for 1887 the acreage in each 
