Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1908 [PAGE 185]

EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:

1907]

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES. STATE LABORATORY OF NATURAL HISTORY.

157

5. Report of the Director of the State Laboratory of Natural History. Voted that it be printed in the minutes. June 25, 1907. To the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois: The most important present operation of the State Laboratory of Natural History is the accumulation of statistical data for an enumeration and analysis of the bird life of Illinois, reference to which was made in my last report. Two observers beginning August 28, 1906, had traveled on foot 1,139 miles up to May 29th of the present year, collecting exact information as to the bird population of 22,374 acres in Illinois, distributed • in all parts of the State from the extreme northern boundary to the southern extremity, and from the Indiana line to the Mississippi River. The entire number of birds identified for this area is 22,824—an average distribution of 721 birds per square mile, or iy8 per acre. The lowest average thus far found was 266 per square mile for central Illinois in December; and the highest average was for extreme southern Illinois during the period of the fall migrations in the early days of November, when 3,271 per square mile were found in the country between Cairo and Anna. The product of one of the early trips of these observers, covering a distance of 191 miles between the Indiana line beyond Danville and the Mississippi river at Quincy, has been thoroughly worked up and published by me as an article in the Bulletin of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History under the title "An Orinthological Cross^Section of Illinois in Autumn." A mathematical assistant is engaged in making the necessary computations from the field data of these observers, putting the subject into form for further study and report. The two observers referred to, Mr. A. O. Gross and Mr. H. A. Ray, are under engagement until September 1st. Studies on the entomology of the State, made with reference to the Natural History Survey, are so interwoven with the work of the State Entomologist's office that it is difficult to give a separate account of them. No opportunity is missed by the economic assistants to add to the knowledge of our entomological species or to their distribution and life histories, whether these are of economic significance or not, provided that such general observation may be made without serious interference with economic investigation. The work of Mr. Hart and one or two assistants during the last year has been mainly in the line of faunal entomology, and he has now nearly finished, with the aid of an undergraduate student, a complete list of the orthopterous insects of the State. Another assistant, Mr. F. E. Wood, is studying the mammals of Illinois with the view to the preparation of a bulletin containing an account of all our species. He has studied this sipring an extraordinary and serious injury to corn in Morgan county, due to the work of moles. The distribution of insects to Illinois high schools was continued during the past winter, each of fifty-eight sets being accompanied by an illustrated descriptive pamphlet, and much material has been accumulated for the preparation of sets of economic species of Illinois insects for all the high schools on our list. Work on the State fish report has been considerably delayed by an unusually strenuous legislative campaign and by the necessity of finding additional assistants and organizing new work in consequence of enlarging appropriations made to the entomologist's office. The State Laboratory of Natural History receives, during the coming two years from the Legislature, appropriations identical with those made at the preceding session. A request for an addition to our printing fund sufficient to enable me to issue a second volume on the plankton work of the Biological Station and to print also the report on the fishes of the' State was not granted by the Appropriations committees, and I shall consequently be