200 American Fisheries Society 



interference, no matter what protests there may be from the owners. 

 In other words, the owners of that submerged land, made so by the 

 introduction of the water from the drainage canal, which was once 

 farmland, are prevented from reaping the benefit of the product of 

 their waters by retaining the right to take oUt fish from these waters, 

 <>r from disposing of the waters under lease or sale. The owners of 

 this land in many instances have done the only thing that they could 

 do, namely, to put their land into levee districts and in some way get 

 their money back on their investment. 



I want to know whether anywhere within the states such a thing 

 as a state preserve or a state reservation could be named. We arc 

 going to agitate the procurement in our state, either by lease or pur- 

 chase, of these tracts now lying outside of the levee districts, and make 

 them breeding grounds for coarser fishes ; and while I have said that 

 the Illinois River is the most productive river in the United States for 

 coarse fish, it is also the greatest bass stream in the state of Illinois. 

 and I have attributed that, of late years, to the fact that the carp, on 

 account of their rapid reproduction, are furnishing food for the bass. 

 As a consequence, of course, if my argument is correct, as the carp 

 disappear so must the bass. ■ 



I believed this was the cause of the disappearance of the carp from 

 the Illinois River, when 1 had a talk with I >r, Forbes, and he gave me 

 some information which puts new light on a great deal of the subject. 

 He tells me that at one place on the Illinois River ,350 acres, which he 

 or bis assistants bad carefully measured, produced half a billion eggs; 

 and he said that by careful daily observation and investigation it was 

 shown that less than 2 per cent of the eggs of the carp were hatched 

 in the year 1910, owing to the fact that they had fallen or were lying 

 upon a decomposing mass of weeds and plants and other things of that 

 kind and were utterly ruined, and that none of the fry in that 350 acres 

 of land ever found its way out, but perished with the receding waters 

 in the hot weather. That is an appalling condition of affairs to those 

 of us on the river who have watched a large commercial interest develop 

 and then suffer a decline. Over $1,000,000 a year has been taken out 

 of that river in the shipment of coarse fish to the East. For several 

 years buffalo were practically extinct, but are now becoming more 

 plentiful. 



There is one other subject I want to speak about in connection with 

 that matter, which I hope the Committee on Resolutions will take broad 

 grounds on and put in such shape that we can all use it with our legis 

 latures. I have been before them for 35 years and I know the diffi- 

 culties that we encounter — I refer to pollution of waters. Take our 

 finest streams in the state of Illinois, the Rock, Fox and Kankakee 

 Rivers, and they have become simply sewers. I made an examination 

 of the Fox where there was once a rocky bottom. Now the bottom is 

 covered with four or five feet of black muck, which is almost unbear- 

 able for its stench when brought to the top. 



