NOTES OF LIFE-HISTORIES OF ILLINOIS FISH. 



By T. L. Hankinson^ Ichthyologist^ Roosevelt Wild 

 Life Forest Experiment Station, Syracuse, N. Y. 



In the progress of the field studies being made of the 

 animal life about Charleston, Illinois, data on the life- 

 histories of twelve species of fish have been obtained, and 

 these will be treated in this paper together with related 

 (lata obtained from literature. Little appears to be known 

 of tlie life-histories of the species of fish in the region, proba- 

 bly because most of them are small and of little economic 

 value. Of the seventy-two species found there, there are 

 thirty-eight have apparently nothing definite published on 

 their life-histories. About three-fifths of the 150 or more 

 species of fish found in the whole State have their breeding 

 habits and breeding habitats almost unknown to ichthyolo- 

 gists, althougli Illinois has probably had its fish fauna more 

 thoroughly studied than any other state. 



Forbes and Richardson ('09) brought together the im- 

 portant facts on the life-histories of Illinois fish, but since 

 this work was written there have been some published 

 contributions to this subject by Richardson ('13) from the 

 Havana region ; by Bertram Smith ('08) from Lake Forest ; 

 by Shelford ('11; '11a; 'lib) and Hubbs ('19) and Meek 

 and Hildebrand CIO) from the region about Chicago; and 

 by Hankinson ( '10 ) from the Charleston region. 



Besides these notes from observations and investigations 

 in the State, species represented in Illinois have been 

 studied outside of the State since Forbes and Richardson's 

 writing as shown by the following publications: — 



Reighard ('10) on the Horned Dace; (10a) on the pearl 

 organs of minnows; ('13; '15) on the Log Perch and some 

 other species ; ('14) on the common Pike; ('20) on suckers. 



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