60 



connected with those streams. The Ilhnois River especially is 

 an enormous storehouse of material wealth, the natural product 

 of which is little appreciated, and the conditions of whose im- 

 provement have but just begun to be understood. With the 

 extraordinary advantage given us by our biological station work 

 on the river we could readily make a quantitative study of the 

 plankton and the other biological products of the entire stream, 

 and I am asking from the state legislature an opportunity to do 

 this work. 



Our previous five-year period of active operations on the 

 river at Havana closed just before the opening of the Chicago 

 drainage canal. Sufficient time has now elapsed since that 

 revolutionary event to allow a reestablishment of the biolog- 

 ical equilibrium in the waters of the Illinois, and a repetition of 

 that work on quantitative lines woiild enable us to determine 

 the influence on the life of the river of a large and sudden 

 increase in the flow of water down its bed. An economic sur- 

 vey of the plant and animal life of the stream would give us 

 a better basis than we now have for a convincing estimate of 

 its value to us, present and prospective, actual and possible. 



With all the operations being planned for the drainage and 

 protection of its bottom-lands, for the deepening of its channel, 

 and for the erection of enormous manufacturing plants upon 

 its banks, there is imminent danger that it will presently be 

 converted into a mere drainage ditch, barren of useful life, and 

 a menace to the public health. A knowledge of its present and 

 prospective values will be a great aid to us in providing against 

 its pollution and economic destruction by the unregulated de- 

 velopment of manufacturing plants along its banks. 



In connection with the proposed work at Havana I hope to 

 set on foot a general ecological survey of a cross-section of 

 the Illinois basin, beginning with the black lands of Logan 

 county and extending across the river to the similar lands of 

 Fulton county. Such a work I hope to see begun the coming 

 summer, with the aid of the ecologists of the Academy, and 

 carried through as an cxamj^le and model of work of this 

 descrijjtion. 



