a personal visit to Florida last spring, and several lines of 
experimental work undertaken in the hope of finding some 
cheaper and more effective insecticide than the one now gener- 
ally in use. In this same connection I have provided for a 
general inspection of nurseries throughout the State, made at 
the expense of the nurserymen. Upon receipt of the report of 
the condition of these nurseries from my inspectors, I have 
siven to nurserymen official certificates setting forth the facts as 
to the existence on their premises of insects likely to be con- 
veyed in trade to the injury of their customers. 
The operations of the Biological Station have been carried 
on during the past two years along lines practically the same as 
those previously reported upon, except that we have done much 
more during the last two years with fishes than previously, with 
the expectation of completing a formal report upon the fishes of 
[llinois on which considerable progress had been made by me 
lone before the opening of the Station. : 
This study of the fishes of the Station field was taken up 
systematically in July, 1897, by Prof. Frank Smith, and con- 
tinued by him without interruption until September 1 of that 
year. In the summer of 1898 this was passed over to Mr. 
Wallace Craig, assigned to the Biological Station as its resident 
naturalist, and he will make this his principal occupation dur- 
ing this entire year. He has been handsomely provided with 
various kinds of apparatus for the collection of fishes in all the 
Station situations, including seines of all sorts, fish traps of 
various size and construction, set nets, and trammel nets. 
This work is being so conducted as to give us correct ideas not 
only of the species occurring at the Station, but of their relative 
abundance and local distribution, their haunts, their habits, 
their regular migrations and irregular movements, their breed- 
ing times and places, their rate of growth, their food, their 
diseases and their enemies, and, in short, the whole economy of 
each kind there represented and of the whole assemblage taken 
together as a community group. 
Extensive studies of the aquatic entomology of the situation 
have also been made, and an elaborate paper on ephemerids and 
dragon-flies, the joint contribution of Messrs. Hart and Adams, 
of the Laboratory staff, and of Professor J. G. Needham, who 
