THE WORK OF THE ILLINOIS BIOLOGICAL STATION.* 
Under the conviction that the present movement for an inten¬ 
sive, scientific study of local faunas and floras is likely to grow, 
and to dominate largely the work of many of our younger biolo¬ 
gists, and that it will center at first in our universities, but will 
come to require more or less independent biological stations for its 
complete realization, I have thought that an outline of the efforts of 
a few Illinois naturalists to work this field in a systematic manner 
might be of interest and of advantage, both positive and negative, 
to the members of this Society. 
The establishment, on the Illinois river sixteen years ago, of a 
small station devoted to this end was immediately owing to the co¬ 
incidence of a circumstance and an accident, the circumstance being 
the existence of a natural history survey of the state, in rather slow 
and desultory operation at the time, and the accident being- the shift¬ 
ing of certain courses in zoology at the University of Illinois from 
one year to another in such a way as to leave the department with 
much less than the usual amount of teaching to do during the year 
1894, and with much more time, consequently, for outside work. 
In view of these conditions and others which it is not necessary to 
specify, I asked of the trustees of the LIniversity, in March, 1894, 
an appropriation of fifteen hundred dollars a year, and a further 
sum of five hundred dollars, to enable me to establish on the Illinois 
river a permanent biological station for continuous investigation 
work throughout the year; and in partial compliance with this request, 
a sum of eighteen hundred dollars was made available for the pur¬ 
pose. Two weeks after this vote, a station was actually opened at 
Havana in leased quarters, with a temporary equipment provided by 
the natural history survey and the University conjointly. As the 
university appropriation was not available until the first of July, 
the funds of the natural history survey were drawn upon for the 
establishment of the work and for its maintenance for the first three 
months, and the same source of supply was resorted to to meet all 
deficits on station account up to July 1, 1895. At the biennial legis¬ 
lative session of 1895 the Illinois legislature made an appropriation 
of twenty-five hundred dollars for the equipment of the Illinois Bio- 
*Read to the Central Branch of the American Society of Zoologists at Iowa 
City, AprilJS, 1910. 
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