Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1916 [PAGE 158]

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158

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS.

[ D e c . 8,

REPORT OF S T A T E LABORATORY OF N A T U R A L HISTORY.

(4) A letter from Prof. Stephen A. Forbes, Director of the State Laboratory of Natural History, transmitting the biennial report of the work of this department: 'November 27, 191%. President Edmund J. James3 University of Illinois. SIR: I have the honor to report concerning the operations of the State Laboratory of Natural History during the past two years, that, with the exception of the necessary routine work at the Urbana headquarters, they have been limited mainly to a continuation of our operations on the Illinois River and its tributary waters, now rapidly approaching a completion of our program. A general survey of the chemistry and biology of the stream, reported for the upper river in article 10 of "Volume IX of the Bulletins of this Laboratory, has now been carried on for the lower part of the river, from Peoria to the mouth, with special attention to the animal life of the shores and bottom of the river and of the lakes of its overflow land. Mud samples were also obtained from these waters for chemical analysis, with a view especially to a classification of the bottom land lakes and streams in respect to their natural productivity. Studies have been made of the length of time during which aquatic animals or their eggs can survive when the land \ies dry between overflow periods. For this purpose samples of the dirt collected from tracts which had been out of the water for various periods were put into jars of water and kept under normal conditions to see what aquatic animals and plants would reappear and multiply. It was a part of the object of this inquiry to test the practicability of a rotation of agriculture an# fish culture, as recommendned by high European authority. Samples of the water of the river have been collected and analyzed chemically every two weeks for an entire year from twelve stations along the course of the stream, together with other samples from the Mississippi River for comparison. The special object of this series is to trace down the stream the gradual transformation of the organic matters contained in the sewage contributions from the Chicago Drainage Canal and from the principal towns along the river banks, with a view to learning where they first become available as food for aquatic plants, and thus, in the end, for the maintenance of fishes. Large collections of fish stomachs have been made and studied to give us details of the natural food of certain of our more important fishes, especially black bass, carp, and buffalo, and our more destructive water animals, particularly gars and cormorants. Similar studies have been made of the food of the smaller animals of the bottom, upon which fishes are largely dependent for their own maintenance. Systematic and continuous observations have been carried on upon the breeding grounds of bass and • carp with reference especially to the fate of the fry in our natural waters. The practical disappearance of the buffalo from the Illinois River, formerly its most important food fish, has led to a study of the buffalo fisheries of the Mississippi River, particularly those at New Boston and Alton, in the hope that light might thus be thrown upon the Illinois River problem. The data derived from these various investigations, together with others of the years preceding the present biennium, have now been tabulated and organized, preliminary to the preparation of reports, upon their various topics; and the manuscripts of several such reports are well advanced towards completion. An analysis and tabulation of all data of fish production of the Illinois River obtainable from the various statistical reports made from 1894 to the last United States Census of 1908, has been made by us with the idea primarily of comparing the productivity of the Illinois waters before and after the opening of the Chicago Drainage Canal in 1900. We have obtained additional data of this sort by a careful compilation and analysis of all shipments of fish from Havana, one of the principal shipping points on the Illinois, from 1908 to the present year. We have been, during the past summer, working upon a program of cooperation with the Rivers and Lakes Commission and the State Game and Fish Commission, which has resulted in the engagement, by the Rivers and Lakes Commission, of Alvord and Burdick, a firm of eminent engineers, to make a general report upon the Illinois River, having in view all the interests concerned. We have collated and turned over to these engineers a considerable body of information concerning the river and its fisheries, and have translated for their use many foreign articles describing fisheries conditions and yields under various forms of management in the Old World. We have also made a general reconnaisance of the river, in their company, in our Station launch, on a trip from LaSalle to Grafton, at the mouth of the stream. , I have also endeavored to make our products and operations as useful as practicable to the Game, and Fish Conservation Commission, have held several conferences with them at their request, and have made a special biological survey of the waters in the Spring Lake* reclamation district as bearing upon propositions of the commissioners of that district for a transfer of a portion of their property to the State for fish production. A similar service was done, at the request of the Rivers and Lakes Commission, in a thoroughgoing biological survey of the unper Fox River, with special reference to pollutions of that stream by towns along its banks of which complaint had been filed with the commission. Our collections were made at fifty-six stations from Dundee to Yorkville, and a preliminary report of the various pollutional conditions found, as illustrated by the plant and animal contents of the stream, was made to the commission September 19. The Illinois River work has been in immediate charge, as heretofore, of Mr, B. E. Richardson, Biologist of the Laboratory,