47 



The special subject which I have fixed upon as the point of direction 

 towards which all our studies shall tend is the effect on the aquatic 

 plant and animal life of a region produced by the periodical overflow and 



fradual recession of the waters of }?reat rivers, phenomena of whicli the 

 llinois and Mississippi rivers afford excellent and strongly marked exam- 

 ples. It is higlily interesting and important, including in its scope 

 nearly every topic concerning the life of our waters which in any way 

 Interests the biologist or the practical man, and it is one for whose 

 investigation we are perhaps better prei)ared by experience, equipment, 

 purposes and associations than any other institution or group of natural- 

 ists in the country. 



As an incidental, but by no means unimportant, result of our work, we 

 shall accunmlate the material for a comparison of the chemical and bio- 

 logical conditions of the waters of the Illinois river at the present time 

 and after the opening of the Chicago drainage canal. 



The practical importance of our undertaking as affording the only sound 

 basis for a scientific fish culture is fully recognized by the highest Ameri- 

 can authority in this field. In a recent letter on this subject, Hon. Mar- 

 shall McDonald, U. S. Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries, says: 



" I have carefully gone over the plans of the Biological Station pro- 

 posed by you, and am particularly struck with the comprehensiveness of 

 the plan of work to be undertaken. The knowledge to be obtained by 

 such investigation as you contemplate is absolutely necessary as a foun- 

 dation upon which to build an intelligent, rational administration of 

 our fishery interests. A knowledge of life in its relation to environment is 

 an important subject which biological investigators have not heretofore 

 sufficiently dealt with, but which, it seems to me, is necessary in order 

 to give practical value to special studies of the different species. After 

 all, it is the relations and interdependence of life in the aggregate, and 

 of the conditions influencing it adversely or otherwise, that mainly con- 

 cern those who are seeking to apply scientific methods of investigation 

 to economic problems. 



" I need not tell you that you may count on the Commission for any 

 cooperation and aid that we may be able to give you in this direction, 

 which, looked at from a purely economic point, I consider of the utmost 

 importance."' 



The Station will also serve as a center of interest and activity for 

 University students engaged on zoological and botanical subjects, and 

 will, in this way, supply a most serious deficiency in our equipment, the 

 disadvantages of which I have long deplored. Not many years ago, bio- 

 logical instruction in American colleges was mostly derived from books. 

 Of late, it has been largely obtained from laboratories instead, but sev- 

 eral years" experience of the output of the zoological college laboratory 

 has convinced me that the mere book-worm is hardly narrower and more 

 mechanical than the mere laboratory grub. Both have suffered, and al- 

 most equally, from a lack of opportunity to study nature alive. One 

 knows about as much as the other of the real aspect of living nature and 

 of the ways in which living things limit and determine each others' 

 activities and characters, or in which all are determined by the inorganic 

 environment. I have been particularly struck with the insufficient prepa- 

 ration of the ordinary graduate from laboratory courses in zoology for 

 the work of a special instructor in the public schools. He cannot be an 

 intelligent guide and teacher in the field, and he commonly has no com- 

 mand of apparatus and methods of experiment calculated to make his 

 pupils acquainted with the system of the living world. 



The immediate and pressing problem of the biological instructor is to 

 provide an equipment and to work out metliods by means of wliich his 

 students may be brought into helpful contact with this world of life 

 while it still lives, and by which they may be enabled to investigate 

 experimentally the problems of mutual influence and relationship which 

 come under the general head of what is now known as biological oecol- 



