Report of Committee on Natural History Survey. 599 
with our thousands of smaller lakes. From these the population 
of Wisconsin will draw a continually increasing supply of food. 
But ignorant management of our waters is as irrational and 
wasteful as ignorant agriculture. We should enter upon the 
study of the problems of water-life with the same union of 
practical and scientific aims as is shown in the handling of the 
problems of agriculture. 
Pearls .—One question of minor importance—yet by no means 
unimportant—deserves special mention. Wisconsin has pro¬ 
duced pearls in the past half-dozen years to a value of $500,000 
or $600,000, as estimated by Mr. G-eorge F. Kunz, the highest 
authority in the United States. These pearls come from the 
clams in the Sugar river district, and have hitherto been col¬ 
lected by the wasteful process of killing the clams. There is 
no need for this waste. The pearls can be removed without 
injuring the clams, and information as to the manner of doing 
this would be published by the survey. Thus the supply of 
pearls can be renewed, and the animals continue to reproduce 
their kind. Not impossibly the clams will be found to flourish 
in other streams in other parts of the state, so that the revenue 
rom this source can be increased in the future, instead of de¬ 
creasing greatly, as it has already done under present condi¬ 
tions. If present methods are continued the pearl producing 
clam will be soon exterminated in Wisconsin. 
Educational Value .—We do not like to leave this topic with 
a presentation of merely financial reasons—important as they 
are—for a study of the life of our animals. There are no sub¬ 
jects of which our people and schools are more ignorant than of 
the wealth and variety of the lower life of our waters. No sub¬ 
jects offer more interest to the student; none are better fit¬ 
ted to broaden the mind than these topics of animal life. The 
survey can do no better educational service to the people than 
to make them acquainted with these neglected subjects. 
Topographic Maps .—The proposed act also provides for topog¬ 
raphy. • For several years the United States geological sur¬ 
vey has had one party engaged in making a topographicial sur¬ 
vey of the state. This work began at Madison and vicinity, 
and extended in a broad belt eastward to Lake Michigan, an 
