ILLINOIS 



2930 



ILLINOIS RIVER 



States, occupying a campus of about 1,200 

 acres, between the cities of Urbana and Cham- 

 paign, which are located fifty miles northeast of 

 the geographical center of the state. 



The university is the outgrowth of the Illi- 

 nois Industrial University, founded in 1867, its 

 present name having been adopted in 1885. 

 Since 1870 women have been admitted as 

 students and have maintained since that time 

 an average of about one-fifth of the student 

 body. The colleges of medicine and dentistry 

 and the school of pharmacy are located in 

 Chicago; all of the other departments are on 

 the Urbana-Champaign campus. The latter 

 comprise the colleges of liberal arts and sci- 

 ences, agriculture, engineering, law and com- 

 merce, the schools of music and education and 

 the library school. The graduate school has 

 been in existence as an independent college 

 since 1906. 



There is a summer session of eight weeks, 

 offering opportunities to teachers. In connec- 

 tion with the university are maintained the 

 state laboratory of natural history, the state 

 geological survey, the state water survey, the 

 agricultural experiment station, the engineering 

 experiment station, the Illinois historical sur- 

 vey and the cooperative investigation of Illi- 

 nois coal problems and mine rescue station. 

 The university has an adviser for foreign stu- 

 dents, who makes the univer&ity as useful as 

 possible to students from foreign lands. There 

 is also a community adviser, who aims to bring 

 the facilities of the university into the various 

 communities of the state, assisting in the solu- 

 tion of community problems and aiding com- 

 mercial organizations, women's clubs, churches, 

 etc., in such ways as are possible. The high 

 school visitor visits the high schools of the 

 state for the purpose of determining the qual- 

 ity of their work and placing those that are 

 satisfactory upon the accredited list of the uni- 

 versity, making it possible for their graduates 

 to enter the university without examination. 



A generous system of scholarships is main- 

 tained, whereby students who win in competi- 

 tive examinations have an opportunity to com- 

 plete the regular courses without paying tui- 

 tion. The university has an annual income of 

 about $3,600,000. There are over 820 persons 

 on its faculty, more than 760 of whom are 

 connected with the Urbana-Champaign depart- 

 ments; of its more than 6,400 students (1917) 

 about 550 are enrolled in the Chicago depart- 

 ments. The library has over 372,730 volumes, 

 in addition to pamphlets, sheet music and 



20,000 volumes of catalogs; in the library of 

 the Chicago departments there are 20,520 vol- 

 umes and 4,000 pamphlets. 



Since 1914 the following buildings have been 

 erected: an addition to the chemical labora- 

 tory, a stock-judging pavilion, an administra- 

 tion building, a new armory, a ceramics 

 building, a vivarium, devoted to zoology and 

 entomology, and a genetics building. The 

 total value of these buildings is more than 

 $1,000,000. Fifty-one of the sixty-four build- 

 ings owned by the university have a valuation 

 exceeding $5,000 each. Under the able man- 

 agement of Edmund J. James, who became 

 president of the university in 1904, the institu- 

 tion has. made remarkable progress. V..V.P. 



ILLINOIS AND MICHIGAN CANAL. In the 

 year 1822 Congress granted to the state of 

 Illinois the right of way for the construction 

 of a canal to connect Lake Michigan by way 

 of the south branch of the Chicago River with 



ILLINOIS CANALS 



(a) Illinois and Michigan Canal ; (&) Hennepin 

 Canal. 



the Illinois River at La Salle. After several 

 surveys and estimates, during which Chicago 

 and Ottawa were founded, it was begun in 1836 

 and finished twelve years later, at a cost of 

 over $6,000,000. The canal, which is ninety-six 

 miles in length, has seventeen locks, each 110 

 feet long and eighteen feet wide, by means 

 of which the drop of 145 feet from Lake Michi- 

 gan to La Salle is accomplished. Boats of 150 

 tons can easily pass through the canal, for it 

 is six feet deep and sixty feet wide at the 

 bottom. For a time after the construction of 

 railways it was little used, but recently it has 

 been cleaned out and is employed to some 

 extent for freight carrying. 



ILLINOIS RIVER, the largest river of 

 state of Illinois, and the most important, 

 from an industrial and an historic standpc 

 It is formed by the union of the Des Flail 

 and Kankakee rivers, whose waters flow 

 gether about forty-five miles southwest 



