Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1888 [PAGE 186]

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REPORT OF STATE LABORATORY OF NATURAL HISTORY.

189

history and breeding habits of this species. We are now carrying this insect through the winter in the botanical conservatory under conditions to give us additional information concerning it. Colonies of the small brown ant, to whose ministrations these plant lice are especially indebted, have been artificially reared and regularly observed through the season to determine their life history and habits. Several species of our cutworms have been bred by us for the first time—one, phenomenally destructive this year throughout the whole State, never before identified or noticed. We have made, both years, studies of the web worms injuring corn and grass-lands with experiments for their destruction. In the spring and early summer of 1888 we made many elaborate experiments with insecticides for the destruction of wireworms in corn. I n 1887 the life history and habits of an insect destructive to meadows—the larva of one of the crane-flies not before known as injurious—was ascertained by field and laboratory observations; studies were made of some of the insects most injurious to nursery stock; additional experiments were conducted for the control of injuries to fruits by the codling moth; the life history, species, and habits of a new plum borer were determined; considerable systematic and biological work was done on a large number of plant louse species; and an elaborate research was carried forward on the contagious diseases of the army worm, several species of cutworms, and the cabbage caterpillar. In 1888 we also learned the habits, development, and history of a large snout beetle responsible for a frequent and extensive injury to corn not before understood, and discovered moans 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 Illinois—principally those known as plant and animal parasites (the causes of disease)—have been carried continuously forward, chiefly, as heretofore, under the immediate charge of Professor T. J. Burrill. Large collections of plant parasites 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 and measures of avoiding its attack have been discovered; and a study