While located at Havana in connection with the work of the Illinois Biological Station on the Illinois River, the writer made a few trips to the tract of waste sandy land lying east of the city, locally known as the Devil's Hole. A novel fauna and flora were noted, but no systematic study of either was attempted until August, 1903, when a brief survey was made of this locality and of similar regions southeast and south of Havana in company with Mr. H. A. Gleason, of the Department of Botany
at the University of Illinois, who studied the flora, the writer giving attention to the fauna, especially to the insect life. At the same season in the following year we made a second visit to these regions, and also examined the sandy tract lying northeast of Havana, between that city and Pekin, which culminates in a remarkable barren area called the Devil's Neck. The botanical results of these two trips are presented by
Mr. Gleason as the second part of this joint article. In 1905 I was enabled to make brief comparative examinations of these same regions in the early part of the season, and of similar sand areas in other parts of western Illinois in August and September. In 1906 I paid a brief visit June 23 to the Illinois valley sand region, stopping off at Bishop, 111.; and in August spent a few days studying the sandy reaches on the flats bordering Lake Michigan above Waukegan, 111. Delays in going to press have enabled me to include herein some important data from the latter locality concerning species already on the list. The limited amount of time available for these visits enabled me merely to secure some knowledge of the abundant, varied, and largely unfamiliar insect fauna, and to develop a large crop of highly interesting biological problems for future investigation. Part III. consists largely of some discussion of these problems, followed by an annotated list of species which it is hoped may be an acceptable contribution to the knowledge of the insect life of Illinois. A comparison of these western Illinois areas with those of the northeastern part of the state is greatly to be desired, as the indications are that their biotas di3er considerably, and are derived more or less from different geographical sources.
Publisher
Champaign : Illinois Natural History Survey
Series/Report Name or Number
Illinois Natural History Survey Bulletin; v. 007, no. 07
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/55234
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