29 
PRESENT NEEDS AND FUTURE DEVELOPMENT. 
The principal present needs of the work, apart from a fund sufficient for 
its maintenance on existing lines, are (1) more elaborate provision for chem- 
ical investigations, (2) a salary fund sufficient to enable me to add an e@x- 
perienced botanist to our present staff, (3) a site of three or four acres near 
the foot of Quiver Lake, and (4) provision for two principal buildings on shore 
and for a small system of permanent ponds with a pumping equipment for 
their maintenance. | 
The necessary chemical work will. undoubtedly be provided for ‘by. the 
Chemical Survey of the waters of the State if the funds available for that 
survey are made sufficient to enable the University chemists to meet our 
wishes in this respect. As already said under another head in this report, 
ehemical analyses are a matter of the first importance to the whole investiga- 
tion we have undertaken. They will have a very great incidental value also 
outside our own field because of their bearing upon questions of public health 
as affected by pollution of the waters of the Illinois River by sewage and other 
waste from the towns above, and ultimately from Chicago by way of the 
drainage canal. 
A knowledge of the plant life of the river is scarcely second in importance 
to that of its animal life; a fact which has been evident to me from the be- 
ginning, but which, nevertheless, I have been compelled largely to ignore 
because of lack of funds to provide for continuous botanical investigation. 
Several competent zodlogists were already in our employ as assistants in the 
State Laboratory of Natural History, and zodlogical investigation could con- 
sequently be provided for with little difficulty and at a relatively small ex- 
pense. Furthermore, the smaller animal forms—the rotifers and the Protozoa— 
zan be successfully studied as a whole only in the living state, while micro- 
scopic plants are capable of preservation in condition to make their subse- 
juent determination practicable. Our plant collections can consequently still 
oe worked up by a botanist having an expert knowledge of aquatic forms. 
{t is very much to be desired that another year may not be allowed to pass 
without provision for this indispensable part of our general subject, without 
which, indeed, final conclusions concerning the cecology and economies of our 
aquatic biology cannot possibly be reached. 
The efficiency of our corps of workers and the quantity of the results of 
‘heir work would be very greatly increased if provision were made for their 
zontinuous maintenance on Quiver Lake. Our daily trips to and from the 
‘own proved very wasteful of time and opportunity, and have added greatly 
‘0 the expense of running the Station launch. Furthermore, notwithstanding. 
the great usefulness of our floating laboratory, it is in some respects insuffi- 
sient for the more advanced stages of our work, and should be supplemented 
dy a laboratory building in the immediate neighborhood. Experimental re- 
searches will presently require a larger equipment than that now at our dis- 
oosal in the jars and small aquaria to which we are at present confined. 
