188 Fortieth Annual Meeting 



below the average in size and plumpness, or when epidemic 

 diseases appear among them ; to follow the course of events 

 in its principal spawning grounds, where our own observa- 

 tions show that tremendous losses, amounting to a local 

 extermination of the young, may occur under usual con- 

 ditions; and to determine, by the use of numbered tags, the 

 range of the wanderings of this and other fishes, and 

 especially to learn how far the various species usually go 

 from the places where they were hatched. We have a rare 

 and remarkable opportunity in Illinois to watch the progress 

 of a biological revolution as important to the life of our 

 waters as was the Norman invasion to the life and history 

 of England. Fortunately, we have for comparison with 

 present and future conditions, the materials and records of 

 several years' systematic and connected work done on the 

 Illinois River before the opening of the drainage canal into 

 Lake Michigan, and when the carp was but just beginning 

 to make its presence felt as a disturber of the then exist- 

 ing order. 



I cannot, within the time limits of your program, go 

 further with the development of this subject, and I must 

 content myself with these sample fragments of its dis- 

 cussion. When the results of our river work began to 

 appear several years ago, a leading American zoologist 

 wrote me that the Illinois promised to become very soon 

 the best known — because the best studied — of any river in 

 the world, and we have been at work a good deal of the 

 time since in an effort to increase still further our knowledge 

 of that stream and the public appreciation of its value. In 

 the face of the gigantic interests — agricultural, industrial, 

 commercial, and political — which are now mustering along 

 its course, with huge schemes in hand for revolutionary 

 operations upon its channel, its banks, and its backwaters, 

 we feel that we need all the backing and assistance we can 

 secure from those concerned in the preservation and 

 development of our native fisheries; and no agency, I am 

 sure, is in a position to give us more effective aid than this 



