LAKE MAXINKUCKEE 

 A Physical and Biological Survey 



By Barton Warren Evermann, A. M., Ph. D., 

 Director of the Museum of the California Academy of Sciences, 



and 

 Howard Walton Clark, B. S., A. M., 

 Scientific Assistant, U. S. Bureau of Fisheries Biological Station, 



Fairport, Iowa. 



Introduction 



Though the United States Fish Commission (now the Bureau 

 of Fisheries) was organized in 1871, it was not until 1888 that 

 any definite attempt was made to study either the biological or 

 physical characters of any of the streams and lakes of the United 

 States. In that year and the two or three years following, a 

 beginning was made toward working out the distribution of the 

 species of fishes in the streams of certain regions, and some little 

 attention was given to the larger crustaceans and to water tem- 

 peratures. Beginning with 1891, one or more field parties from 

 the Division of Scientific Inquiry of the Commission have been 

 in the field, usually for a brief period each summer. These par- 

 ties usually gathered data for each stream examined, upon the 

 following points : character of country through which the stream 

 flows ; the volume of water which it carries ; general character of 

 the water as to clearness and purity, and its temperature; the 

 fishes, crustaceans, mollusks, reptiles, batrachians and other ani- 

 mals inhabiting the stream or found about it, and the abundance, 

 distribution and habits of each ; also, the species of aquatic 

 plants, their distribution, abundance, and relation to the fishes of 

 the same waters. The primary and immediate objects of these 

 investigations were to determine what fishes each stream already 

 contains and whether the conditions, physical and biological, are 

 favorable for the introduction of other species. Since 1890 inves- 

 tigations of this kind have been carried on in a number of States, 

 among which may be mentioned California, Oregon, Washington, 

 Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, 

 Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, New York, 



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