54 



Laboratory of Natural History. Collections have also been se- 

 cured and some studies made at Fox lake and Cedar lake, in 

 Lake county. 



Mr. Shelford has made some original observations, and 

 a study of the literature, on the gross features of the Chicago 

 region which influence the ecological distribution of animals, 

 and has brought the results together in a base map of the 

 Chicago area. He has conducted a study of the animal so- 

 cieties of twenty stations in the Illinois portion of the Chi- 

 cago region, so selected as to represent the most important 

 ecological features. These results, together with a detailed 

 study of as many more stations in Indiana, a large part of 

 which represent conditions w'hich existed in Illinois before the 

 building of the city of Chicago, are being brought together 

 in a paper on the animal societies of the Chicago area, now 

 nearing completion. This paper discusses the succession of 

 pond and stream animals, and the succession of animals asso- 

 ciated with the forest development. 



One of the students working under Mr. Shelford's direction 

 has begun a detailed study of the region from the Skokie 

 Marsh to the Lake, in continuation of the work done by Mr. 

 Baker. Another is making a study of some of the older 

 sloughs inside one of the old lake beaches, and has followed 

 one of these sloughs for nearly a year. A third is following 

 throughout the year the fauna of a small plot which is a 

 temporary pond in spring and low prairie in summer. 



Air. Hankinson is making an ecological study of the fishes 

 of the streams about Charleston, ascertaining their feeding 

 and breeding habitats, the character of the bottom, the depth 

 of the water, and the speed of the current i)referred for these 

 purposes. He divides each stream into stations, and makes 

 collections from each as often as possible at all seasons of the 

 year, taking detailed notes of the depth and width of the 

 water, the temperature of air and water, and of the vegeta- 

 tion and the species of vertebrates associated with fishes in 

 these collections. A qualitative study of the food is made for 

 each species, and correlated with the numbers of organisms 



