Ward. — An Experimental Fish Plant 171 



favorably and unfavorably the development of all sorts 

 of living things. Such an experiment station has not as 

 yet been established to deal with the problems of the 

 fisheries. The famous Woods Hole Station, established 

 through the efforts of the distinguished United States 

 Commissioner of Fisheries, Spencer Fullerton Baird, 

 comes perhaps the nearest to meeting the conditions that 

 obtain in agriculture; yet the force of scientific investi- 

 gators is at work there only during a portion of the year, 

 whereas the rest of the time the plant is utilized as a 

 hatchery. 



In my opinion, the tendencies of our universities are 

 in a certain degree responsible for this neglect of aquatic 

 life. In the various college laboratories of departments 

 of natural history, experiments of the most diverse kinds 

 are being carried on constantly. Most of these experi- 

 ments concern problems of a rather theoretical character. 

 It is the effort of pure science to establish and analyze 

 conditions for existence in the broadest sense, and all 

 groups of animals serve only so far as they are adapted 

 for the testing of theoretical questions, or are related to 

 problems of economic importance to the community. The 

 agricultural interests are fundamental and their impor- 

 tance has served to direct the attention of scientific 

 men to the wisdom of determining the features that 

 they have desired to have investigated. Recently there 

 has been a movement in our universities to inaugu- 

 rate a more careful study of the conditions under 

 which animals and plants actually live and the impor- 

 tance of individual factors among these conditions for 

 the welfare of the organism. The Board of Trustees of 

 the University of Illinois has voted to spend a sum of 

 money in the construction of a plant for experiment work 

 on animals. Strictly speaking this is to be devoted to an 

 effort to solve all problems of animal existence, both such 

 as are related to terrestrial existence affecting prominent- 

 ly the land animals with which the agriculturist works, 

 and such as concern aquatic existence being thus of first 

 importance to the fish culturist. An examination of the 

 plan will show the general way in which these problems 



