SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING 13 



umes by Shelf ord and Adams are invaluable to the student of 

 ecology, supplying means of guidance, models of work, state- 

 ments of principles, summaries of existing knowledge, and 

 comprehensive references to literature, hitherto altogether 

 wanting. Forbes and Richardson's work on the Illinois River 

 has principal reference to pollutional effects and to fisheries, 

 but takes into account the whole system of life from the micro- 

 scopic plankton to the vertebrates, with only slight reference, 

 however, to the larger plants. It represents the first attempt 

 made in this country to correlate lists of biological species with 

 degrees of contamination of the water, in a way to make the 

 former an index to the latter. The paper has attracted the 

 special attention of sanitary engineers. Besides the various 

 ecological papers by Transeau, Hankinson, Harvey, and Fuller 

 in the last volume of the Trasactions of the Academy, honor- 

 able mention should be made of a report on an Associational 

 Study of Illinois Sand Prairies, by Arthur G. Vestal, which 

 has been published, within the year, as a bulletin of the State 

 Laboratory of Natural History. 



The field work of the State Laboratory of Natural History 

 has been devoted almost entirely to the Illinois River situa- 

 tion, in the form of a survey of the plant and animal life of 

 the river and connected waters of the bottom-lands from 

 Peoria to the mouth of the stream. The collections, mainly 

 from the bottom and shores of the waters, were comprehen- 

 sive of all animal forms except those of the plankton, and 

 were made as nearly as practicable by quantitative methods, 

 for the purpose of comparing the productivity of different 

 waters and different parts of the stream system. Samples of 

 the bottom sediments of the waters were systematically taken 

 from a large variety of situations, and are now in process of 

 analysis at the Chemical Laboratory of the University of 

 Illinois. Regular series of water samples from various points 

 down the river are also being obtained for analysis in the lab- 

 oratories of the State Water Survey, the object of this study 

 being to trace the transformations of sewage materials down 

 the stream and to learn where they first become most available 

 for the nutrition of plants and animals. Thorough statistical 

 studies of the fisheries products of different sections of the 

 Illinois River for a period of years have also been made, with 

 some important economic consequences which will be present- 

 ly detailed in a bulletin of the State Laboratory of Natural 

 History, giving the product of the season's work. 



Doctor Adams has completed his part of the report on the 



