208 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH' COMMISSION. 



TRIP OF 1890. 



Leaving the University of Illinois July 11, I was joined in Chicago by Prof. 

 Linton July 14, having spent the interval in supplying deficiencies in our outfit. We 

 left Chicago on the evening of the 14th, reached Mammoth Hot Springs, in Yellow- 

 stone National Park, via the Northern Pacific Railroad from St. Paul, during the 

 afternoon of July 17, and went into camp the same evening on Swan Lake Plateau, 

 with everything ready for the field. Our party at starting consisted of Prof. 

 Linton and myself, our guide, Mr. Elwood Hofer, who had made our camp ready in 

 advance, and a teamster, two packers, and a cook. Our outfit contained (besides the 

 necessary camp equipage) pack animals and saddle horses for six men, a portable can- 

 vas boat with two pairs of oars, two naturalist's dredges with rope, a set of portable 

 sieves for assorting the contents of the dredges, a sounding line, a very deep trammel 

 net 50 yards long, a creek seine, an ordinary minnow seine, a Baird collecting seine, 

 surface nets, hand nets, two deep-sea thermometers, a dissecting microscope, a com- 

 pound microscope with complete equipment for field microscopy and for the preserva- 

 tion of perishable minute material, tanks of alcohol, bottles, vials, etc. 



Breaking camp on the morning of July 18, we rode 25 miles through Norris Geyser 

 Basin and down the Gibbon River to the branch of the latter known as Canyon Creek, 

 where we camped for the night and made our first collections with hand nets from that 

 stream. On the 19th we rode through the lower and upper geyser basins and camped 

 just beyond the latter, on the banks of the Firehole River. 



Collections with hand and surface nets were made here from various points on the 

 Firehole and from the outlet of a warm spring on its banks. As we were now to travel 

 for some weeks by mountain trails, the teamster was here turned back, and the pack 

 animals were loaded for the trip across the " continental divide." Leaving this camp 

 on July 20, we crossed the divide through Norris Pass and went into camp on the 

 shore of the north end of Shoshone Lake, at the mouth of Heron Creek. A hurried 

 dip with surface nets was made, in passing, into the waters of some large ponds, with- 

 out outlet, in the mountains near the summit of the divide. 



On Shoshoue Lake we stayed for the three days following (two of the party 

 circumnavigating it on the 22d), and made extensive collections along shore, in the 

 inlet of the lake, in an overflow lagoon or pond beside it, and from its own waters with 

 towing net and dredge, from the surface by day and night, and from the bottom at 

 depths varying from 8 to 40 feet. Breaking camp on this lovely lake, which will ever 

 have a peculiar charm in our memories as the place where systematic work on the 

 invertebrate life of the waters of the Park began, we went on the morning of the 24th 

 to Lewis Lake, 12 miles below, two of the party running the rapids of Lewis River in 

 the boat. We camped on the east shore of Lewis Lake, working July 24 and 25 with > 

 dredge and small nets in the lake, and making miscellaneous collections from streams 

 of various temperatures and from the waters of a swamp which becomes connected 

 with the lake in spring. 



From Lewis Lake we rode to Heart Lake, a distance of 7 or 8 miles along the 

 foot of the Red Mountains. Arriving at noon of tbe 26th, we crossed Witch Creek 

 and camped in a grove of pines above its mouth, not far from the foot of Mount Sheri- 

 dan, whose precipitous front was a maze of roaring streams supplied by the melting 



