54 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



tial. The practice in the United States should be ascer- 

 tained; the areas in which specially destructive and 

 drastic measures such as burning are necessary, should 

 be clearly defined and limited. 



2. Upland marshes are important water-storage 

 sponges letting it out slowly during dry seasons thus 

 controlling floods. Such marshes are gradually being 

 drained and the flood menace is increasing every year. 

 The only way to save these natural resources and at the 

 same time the swamp faunas, especially the birds, is to 

 utilize the swamps for aquiculture. To this end several 

 aquicultural experiment stations should be established. 



For the present there should be one perhaps at Cornell 

 University to deal with upland marsh problems. There 

 should be another in connection with Okefinokee Swamp 

 and one in connection with the coastal swamps of New 

 Jersey. In addition to frogs, fish, and birds, a number 

 of plants are good f oi: food, etc. ; cattail flour and cattail 

 paper have recently been tried with success. Swamp 

 potatoes, the corms of arrowhead, and seeds, roots and 

 stalks of our native lotus served as food for the American 

 aborigines and pioneers. Hedrick (Science 40: 611), 

 Claussen (Sci. Mo. 9:179), and Needham and Lloyd 

 (''Life of Inland Waters") have discussed these ques- 

 tions and are actively interested. 



VII. DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURAL AREAS 



A listing of all preserves and preservable areas now 

 in a natural condition constitutes an inventory of what 

 has been done and what may still be done. The list, now 

 incomplete but in tentative form, indicates that there are 

 certain kinds of areas of which we have no preserv^ed 

 samples or no areas proposed for preservation. For ex- 

 ample, certain t^qoes of semi-desert have attracted so 

 little attention that there is a possibility of none of the 

 type of vegetation Avliich they represent being preserved. 

 The list also shows that there are many preserved areas 

 of certain types and very few or none of others, and 

 that the territory near educational institutions which 

 can make use of such preserves, in many cases, is almost 



