180 Fortieth Annual Meeting 



especially imperative because of the great changes in prog- 

 ress at the present time in its environment and the still 

 greater changes contemplated or impending, which have 

 affected, or must certainly affect, greatly and permanently, 

 its value for the purposes which it now serves. Reclama- 

 tion projects, for the protection, drainage, and cul- 

 tivation of its bottom-lands; manufacturing projects, 

 threatening a various contamination of its waters; canaliza- 

 tion projects and projects for the control and equalization 

 of its flow, in the interests of transportation, — all are being 

 earnestly agitated, and several of them are in process of 

 active execution. 



Although the problem of the maintenance and develop- 

 ment of favorable conditions in this stream is by these facts 

 made somewhat special, in many of its general features the 

 Illinois is virtually like all other rivers, and a satisfactory 

 program for its investigation would be readily adaptable, I 

 believe, to many other streams, and applicable in its main 

 features to rivers in general. It is for these reasons espe- 

 cially that I have ventured to ask the attention of this 

 broadly representative body to my special topic, and to ask 

 your criticism of its proposals now, when criticism can be 

 made most profitable. 



Versed as you are in the literature and accepted methods 

 of fish culture, I scarcely need remind you that principles 

 of management and methods of protection and improvement 

 are not nearly so well settled for the fisheries of our natural 

 waters as they are for fish culture in artificial ponds, and 

 that the maintenance and utilization of our fisheries has 

 been much less thoroughly studied for rivers, either in this 

 country or in the Old World, than it has for lakes. This 

 is, no doubt, in part because lake fisheries are, generally 

 speaking, both more important and more readily con- 

 trollable than river fisheries, and partly because the river 

 problem is much the more complicated and difficult of the 

 two. The Illinois River has, however, so many lakes in 

 its bottom lands, merged with it in times of flood, distin- 



