26 FISHES OF ILLINOIS 



would have been established on Lake Erie or Ontario if a location 

 had been found where spawning females and ripe males were plenti- 

 ful enough to justify it. The Michigan Fish Commission hatched 

 and planted 450,000 young sturgeons in the Detroit River in 1893, 

 130,000 in 1894. 



The sturgeon fisheries of the Illinois lake shore, at Chicago, 

 South Chicago, and Waukegan, were formerly of considerable 

 importance, the catch at those three points in 1885 amounting to 

 101,362 lb, or nearly as much as was obtained in 1899 from the 

 whole of Lake Michigan. The quantity taken in 1899 was negligible, 

 finding no place in the statistics. The decrease in Lake Michigan 

 in the two decades ending 1899 is shown by the following totals: 



1880 3 , 839 , 600 lb. 



1885 1,406,678 " 



1890 946,897 " 



1893 311,780 " 



1899 108,279 " 



We find no early statistics of the sturgeon fisheries of the Illinois 

 and Mississippi rivers, though it is generally known that they have 

 decreased greatly in the past 30 years. The quantity of lake 

 sturgeon taken from the Illinois river in 1894 was 2,145 lb, while 

 the Mississippi on our borders the same year furnished 37,366 lb. In 

 1899 the Illinois River product had fallen to 635 lb, and in 1903 no 

 lake sturgeon at all were reported from the Illinois. The total 

 product of the interior waters of the United States, exclusive of the 

 Great Lakes, in 1894 was 1,494,022 lb, falling in 1899 to 234,145, 

 and in 1903 to 142,059 tb. 



Genus SCAPHIRHYNCHUS Heckel 

 (shovel-nosed sturgeons) 



Snout broad and shovel-shaped; caudal peduncle long and flattened 

 and completely armored; lower lip well developed, with 4 lappet-bearing 

 papillose lobes; spiracles wanting; pseudobranchs rudimentary; gill- 

 rakers 2- to 5-pointed; ribs 10 or 1 1 ; air-bladder 5 in length of head and- 

 body. Fresh- water fishes of the Mississippi Valley. One species known. 



