409 



specimens indicated that about nine out of ten buffalo ot all species 

 had spawned. 



A good deal of time was devoted in the spring and summer of 

 1910 and 191 1 to the search for buffalo fry and fingerlings, though 

 practically without success. Various reports of spawning of small 

 bunches of buffalo proved, when followed up, to have referred to 

 carp. Old spawning grounds, frequented by buffalo in thousands at 

 breeding time some ten or fifteen years ago, do not now seem 

 to be visited at all by buffalo. In fact the decrease of buffalo in 

 the Illinois River seems to have been going on steadily during the 

 last thirty years, and has been particularly noticeable since the com- 

 pletion of the lower locks and dams at La Grange (1889) and 

 Kampsville (1893), the introduction and rapid increase of European 

 carp, and the opening of the Chicago Drainage Canal. In 1881, Ira 

 Sargent, an old fisherman still living in Havana, took 251,000 pounds 

 of buffalo in Moscow Lake, below Bath, in a single haul with a 700- 

 yard seine. Now the catch of buffalo at Havana and Beardstown 

 probably runs on the average considerably less than 50 lbs. to 1000 

 lbs. of carp. The true reasons for this great decrease in buffalo are 

 not at present wholly clear. That the construction of the lower Illi- 

 nois river dams serves to some if not to a great extent to keep 

 buffalo from coming up the river to spawn as formerly, is not un- 

 likely, and seems to be indicated by such facts as the present rarity 

 of observations of buffalo fry and fingerlings above the La Grange 

 dam and their much greater abundance at points below La Grange, 

 and more especially at points below Kampsville. The preference of 

 buffalo for water of good depth and their timidity in the face of 

 obstructions that carp would disregard, are pretty well established by 

 the testimony of many observers, both fishermen and naturalists. 

 That actual competition with the European carp for food may have 

 a bearing on the decrease of buffalo is less certain, but is suggested 

 by the steady change in the ratio of carp to buffalo in the catches 

 at Grafton and Alton during the last seven or eight years. As late 

 at 1904 and 1905, many more buffalo than carp were taken at these 

 places. Now the ratio is reversed, Grafton fishermen mtorming me 

 in 191 1 that they got hardly more than 100 lbs. of buffalo to 1000 

 lbs. of carp. That the fouling of the bottom of the Illinois River in 

 the last twenty years with city wastes may have something to do with 

 the decrease is not out of the range of possibility. In this connec- 

 tion it is interesting to note the testimony of fishermen who have 

 recently fished in both the Sangamon and the Illinois that at the 

 present time buffalo are relatively more abundant and of finer qual- 

 ity in the Sangamon than in the Illinois River. 



