48 



ogy- With the new Station at Havana put on a firm foundation and 

 liberally maintained, tlie University of Illinois will be better equipped 

 in this particular than any other institution in America. 



The utility of the Station to the University summer school has already 

 been mentioned. Possibly still more important is the opportunity which 

 it will offer, when permanently established and fairly well developed, to 

 the independent student and investigator, zoological or botanical, who 

 may desire to pursue his studies in the field coyered by our operations. 

 It is a part of the plan of organization and equipment of our Illinois 

 River Station to receive and assist in every practicable way advanced 

 students and investigators of this description from whatever place they 

 may come. 



Havana was selected by me as the site of the Station because of sev- 

 eral unique advantages offered by that locality. Streams and lakes illus- 

 trating practically all the tyj^ical Illinois river situations are to be found 

 there, convenient of access from a central point and from each other. 

 An extensive sandy bluff, commonly well shaded and oozing spring water 

 at its foot, borders the river bottom on the east, and iuiroduces several 

 unusual features of interest to the oecologist, besides affording a clean 

 and hard shore to work from, dry, shady and well-drained camping ground, 

 and an abundance of very pure cold water at all times of the year. Z!vo 

 other situation at all suited to our purpose could have been selected 

 which was less likely to endanger the health of our field parties, 

 necessarily exposed to malarial infection as they are in midsummer and 

 early fall by the nature and surroundings of their work. The Havana 

 division of the Illinois Central Railway affords ready means of communi- 

 cation between the Station and the University by trains running with- 

 out change of cars, and thus makes possible the convenient transporta- 

 tion of live material to. the University for study and experimental usev- 

 and also gives the students of the summer school a chance to avail them- 

 selves of tne Station equipment for experience in the field. The absence 

 of any extraordinary source of pollution to the river water nearer than 

 Pekin, thirty miles above, and the neighborhood of the field operations 

 of the United States Fish Commission at Meredosia, fifty miles below, 

 were likewise points in favor of this location. The summer's experience 

 there has satisfied me that no mistake was made in this respect, .but 

 that, on the contrary, the vast abundance and great variety of plant and 

 animal life in the river at that point, and especially in the bottom-land 

 lakes connected with the stream in all stages of water and completely 

 submerged by it in times of overflow, makes this locality one of the very 

 best possible for my purposes. 



The work was provided for this year in three well-placed rooms in the 

 town itself and in a "cabin boat" on the Illinois river, both furnished 

 from the laboratories and libraries of the University and the State Lab- 

 oratory of Natural History with everytliing necessary to first-class work 

 in the collection, preservation, preparation and systematic study of our 

 material, together with some special pieces of apparatus and other ap- 

 pliances manufactured to our order for this work. 



The office and laboratory rooms were supplied with running water and 

 electric light, and liberally provided with the usual equipment of a bio- 

 logical laboratory, consisting of compound and dissecting microscopes 

 (Reichert and Zeiss), microtomes, biologicalreagents to the number of one 

 hundred bottles, water and parrafine baths, laboratory glassware, tanks 

 for alcohol, a coal stove, a kerosene stove, laboratory tables for five assist- 

 ants, and a working library of about one hundred and twenty volumes. ' 



The cabin-boat was used as a field headquarters, and stationed on 

 Quiver lake, two and a half miles above the town. It carried the seines, 

 sounding lines, aerial and aquatic thermometers, dredges, surface nets 

 Birge nets, insect nets, plankton apparatus, and other" collecting equii)- 

 ment, together with microscopes (Zeiss and Bausch l*s: Lomb) reagents, 

 a small working library, a large number of special breeding cages for 



