Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1898 [PAGE 122]

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122

UNIVERSITY OF I L L I N O I S .

[June 9

The assistant in entomology should class as a laboratory assistant, but I ask that this appointment be left to the Executive Committee, as I am not yet prepared to make a choice among several persons available for this place. I also recommend the following scale of salaries for the ensuing year, commencing July 1, 1897: Mr. C. A. Hart, $1,000.00;. Dr. C. A. Kofoid, $1,300.00; Miss M. J. Snyder, $900.00; Mr. H. C. Forbes, $1,100.00. According to my present arrangement with Miss Hart she receives a minimum salary of $20 a month, with pay at the.rate of thirty-five cents an hour when (as is usually the case) the amount of work given her amounts at this rate to more than the above salary. I ask that this arrangement be authorized and continued. Concerning the work of the State Laboratory for the coming year I have to report that embarrassments resulting from the financial situation have prevented the carrying1 out of our plans for a summer school of biology at Havana, but that the Station will open July 1st, under the new appropriations^ with Dr. Kofoid in immediate charge, and with a small party of visiting investigators in attendance. I hope that full and early provision may be made for a summer school next year on substantially the same plan as that contemplated this summer. In the absence of any building or building fund, we shall probably be obliged to avail ourselves of the courtesy of the school board of Havana, which by a unanimous vote placed the village high school building1, at our disposal. The regular word of the Station will go on much as last year, with the addition of some indispensable items of equipment which will greatly increase the value of the so-called plankton work. Three papers, mainly the product of station investigations, are now ready for the press and will be sent to the printer without delay, and a fourth, nearly complete, will follow presently. As an illustration of the stimulating influence of the operations of the Station upon the corresponding departments of the University, I may call attention to the fact that two of the above papers are undergraduate theses by students who worked at the Station,, and whose papers are thoroughly creditable contributions to a knowledge of North American aquatic zoology. They are, in fact, the first undergraduate theses ever published from any of the University biological courses. The Laboratory bulletins and reports already printed, embodying" the finished results of our Station work, amount to three hundred pages of print and sixty pages of plates. An important new departure in our Biological Station work will be the systematic studies of the fishes of our field. It is my intention to have ready by the next session of the Legislature a volume on the fishes of the State, to make the third of our series of zoological reports, and to be published in a uniform style with the two volumes of the ornithological report. This work will probably be done mainly by Professor Frank Smith and myself. The entomological work is at present chiefly directed to the insect injuries to Indian corn, with a view to the preparation of the second part of the monograph on that subject for publication in my next report as State Entomologist. Orchard and nursery insects, including the San Jose scale, are also receiving special attention, the work on the latter species being especially provided for by an appropriation of $3,000.00, made direct to the State Entomologist's office in the general appropriation for the expenses of the State government. By the terms in ;vhieh this appropriation is made the State Entomologist is charged with duties additional to those for which he has been heretofore responsible, being now required to provide for the inspection of orchards and nurseries, and for special personal instruction to fruit growers any nurserymen with respect to the methods for the destruction of the San Jose scale. Eespectfully submitted,

S. A. FORBES, Director.

June 5, 1897. T h e report was approved, a p p o i n t m e n t s and appropriations, b e i n g made as t h e r e i n recommended.