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Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1888
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REPORT OF STATE LABORATORY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 193 this field experimentation does not properly belong to entomology; it is very expensive in time and money; and I shall be glad to be wholly relieved from it. On the other hand, I have undertaken to determine insects referred to me as of economic interest by those engaged in the Experiment Station work; to study their life histories ; and to make office experiments with respect to them, as far as our resources will permit, reporting results for such verification in the field as may seem to be required. NEEDS OF THE WORK. For the future we need especially an entomological laboratory, that we may conduct our experimental work on a larger scale and under, conditions completely under our control, The necessity we are now under for traveling 150 miles every time we wish to make an observation on the Hessian fly or the chinch bug because we cannot arrange breeding frames large enough to contain a sufficient number of these insects and their food, and our failure after four years' work to make out some of the indispensable points in the life history and habits of the corn plant louse, becausejwe have no sufficient means of keeping these species under observation without exposing our specimens to conditions so unnatural that they soon perish, are illustrations of the disadvantages under which we work. To supply this lack I shall have to ask from the legislature an appropriation of $1,000 for the erection and furnishing of a suitable building for the breeding of insects, the rearing of their food plants, and other experimental work of this description. Otherwise the appropriations now required need not vary materially from those made at the last session of the legislature.-
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