No. 378.] BIOLOGICAL STATIONS IN AMERICA. 403 
and this is the order, broadly speaking, in which the general investigation 
must be carried on. Both systematic and biographical biology have a high 
independent value in our scheme, but both are with us chiefly means to the 
remoter end of a study of the interactions of associate aquatic organisms, 
and of their relations to nature at large. It is thus the cecological idea 
which is to lead in the organization and development of our work. 
systematic survey of the biological assemblage is a necessary preliminary 
step, and the tracing of life histories and the recognition and description of 
immature stages is a scarcely less essential prerequisite; for without the 
knowledge which these studies are to give us, it would be obviously impos- 
sible to make any comprehensive study of variations, distribution, and 
ecological relationships. 
The cecology of the Illinois River is greatly complicated, and the difficulty 
of its study intensified, by certain highly and irregularly variable elements 
of the environment. Apart from those secular and more or less inconstant 
features of climate and weather which must be taken into account wherever 
such studies are prosecuted, we often have here the evidently very large and 
highly intricate reactions produced by periodic variations in the river level, 
and the consequent enormous extensions and corresponding diminutions of 
the mass of the waters and of the area covered by them. Fortunately for 
the possibilities of success in so difficult a field, progress in it does not 
require that the entire system of life should be studied as a unit at first. 
Special problems may be selected, of a kind to be brought easily within the 
available time and the capacities of the individual investigator, which, being 
worked out one by one, may be later brought together as contributions to a 
solution of the larger problems involved. 
In actual practice it has been found that our work may best be opened 
up by comprehensive studies of the classification, such as will give us a 
critical knowledge of all the forms occurring in our field, and access to the 
published literature of each; and by parallel or slightly subsequent studies 
of their habits, life histories, and local distribution and abundance. 
The principal methods of the biological station are those of field and 
laboratory observation and record, collection, preservation, qualitative and 
quantitative determination, description, illustration, generalization, experi- 
ment, induction, and report. 
By close and persevering observation in the field, we learn much of the 
actions, habits, and haunts of animals, of the special conditions under which 
they live, and of many similar matters which cannot possibly be learned in 
any other way; and not a little of this knowledge is necessary to an intelli- 
gent treatment of both general and special problems in biology. 
The acute, persevering, sympathetic observer of living nature — the “ old- 
fashioned naturalist,” in short —is best to be understood as a “ synthetic 
o 
