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STATE LABORATORY OF NATURAL HISTORY,
CHAMPAIGN, ILLINOIS.
JUNE 8, 1887.
GAZETTE STEAM PRINT.
NATURAL HISTORY SURVEY LIBRARY
To the Trustees of the University of Iliinois: GENTLEMEN: At the meeting of the Trustees of the University held in July, 1885, it was Resolved, That it is the sense of this Board that the Director of the State Laboratory of Natural History should make quarterly reports to this Board,
through the Regent of the University, of the affairs and operations of the labo- ratory under his charge.
Heretofore, observing, perhaps, the spirit rather than the letter of this resolution, | have endeavored to make you acquainted in- formally with our operations each quarter, so far as was necessary to your intelligent action on the requests which I have from time to time submitted to you; but I have not made to you systematic quarterly reports on the details of our work. I have lately con- cluded, however, that more should be known by the public in- terested, with respect to the scope, purpose, and results of the opera- tions of the State Laboratory of Natural History; and as one means to an improvement of our position in this respect; I have decided to avail myself of the resolution cited above, and to file with you, for your information, an outline of our plan of operations and of the work accomplished each quarter.
The work of the Laboratory is two-fold, relating on the one hand to the natural history survey of the State (finally authorized and organized by the Legislature of 1884-85), and on the other, to the State Entomologist’s Office, the working funds of which are all derived, under existing arrangements, from the Laboratory appro- priations. As State Entomologist, I am directly responsible only to the Governor; but the entomological and the general zoological work going on under my charge are so intimately blended that I eannot well report upon one without including the other; and as both are now supported by State appropriations administered by this Board, I have thought best to include both in this statement.
The principal operations of the State Laboratory conveniently divide into original investigation, and the preparation and publica- tion of papers, bulletins, and reports. We have been especially en- gaged during the last quarter upon the following subjects:
(1) The life history of the Hessian fly. This is in continua- tion of the research begun last year on the midsummer and winter history of this species, by means of experimental sowings of wheat made at intervals throughout the summer in southern Illinois. By observing the appearance of the insects in these experimental plots and following the history of the various lots through the winter and
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spring, we have ascertained facts which promise important measures for the control of this pest. Field experiments with remedies based on this new knowledge will be made this summer in the southern part of the State.
(2) The life history of the corn plant louse. By tield obser-
rations and office breeding experiments we have now cleared up the
winter history of this species,—a point upon which nothing has heretofore been known. Similar methods will doubtless give us this season the data for a full life history of this pest of the corn fields.
(3) The life history and species of various corn cutworms. By breeding experiments with the various cutworms affecting corn, we expect to determine the species of these larve, and also the precise period when each ceases its destruction in the field,—a matter of economic interest, because it must fix the time when replanting corn destroyed by these insects will be profitable.
(4) The life history of certain Tipulid larve, which have this year proved to be exceedingly mischievous in meadows and pastures. This subject has already been brought to satisfactory conclusion.
(5) Field and laboratory experiments for the control of the ravages of the root web worm,—an insect recently discovered, which has this year done great and wide-spread injury to young corn.
(6) Orchard experiments with lime for the prevention of damage to apples by the codling moth.
( 7) Field experiments in southern Illinois to test the influence of various fertilizers in supporting the farm crops against the attacks of the chinch bug. Other experiments for the protection of the corn crop against this insect will be begun this month.
(8) Elaborate studies of the contagious diseases of insects— especially of the silkworm, army worm, and the varions cutworms, together with experiments for the artificial production of these dis- eases.
(9) Studies of the animal life of the lakes of Illinois, for which we are systematically working over the large collections made while we were at Normal, and putting the data accumulated in shape for publication.
(10) Of a different character are some personal studies of the minute anatomy of blind Crustacea as compared with those having the power of vision,—a study which we have here an unusual op- portunity to pursue, since these eyeless forms are very abundant im our subterranean waters.
(11) Studies made by Professor Garman on the minute anatomy of peculiar forms of earthworms common in this region.
(12) Collections and studies of a family of leaf mites *(Phy- topti) injurious to vegetation, which Professor Garman is also carry- ing forward.
(13) Studies of certain families of parasitic Hymenoptera and of harvestmen (Phalangide), which Mr. Weed is making.
(14) Miscellaneous breeding cage experiments on the life his-
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tories of insects, largely of economic species, made chiefly by Mr. Hart and Mr. Weed.
To this list I should perhaps add the routine work of the office in the collection of specimens, especially of insects, and in the label- ing, determination, and arrangement of the insect collections which have accumulated in the office,—a work which falls especially upou Mr. Hart.
Here I ought also to mention the studies made, at the expense of the Laboratory appropriations, by Professor Burrill and his assist- ant, on certain families of the parasitic fungi of the State,—a work preliminary to the preparation of papers for our bulletins and the final report on the cryptogamic botany of [llinois.
The field work of the Laboratory and office has fallen chiefly to myself and Mr. Weed. It has covered all parts of the State, from Cairo to Galena, but has mostly been done in southern [llinois, where the situation this year is of peculiar interest. The various trips made since last March aggregate 2500 miles of travel.
Our publications comprise four series; the regular entomological reports, the bulletins of the entomological office, the bulletins of the State Laboratory of Natural History, and the State zoological report. The papers and reports recently prepared and published, or now in course of preparation, are as follows:
(1) The 15th Report of the State Entomologist of [linois, now practically finished and awaiting the orders of the State Board of Contracts.
(2) A general account of the lake fauna of Illinois, delivered us an address to the Peoria Scientific Association and published in the Bulletin of that Association this year, and also in an emended edition, as a separate
(8) A general article on contagious insect disease read as a presidential address to the Entomological Club of Cambridge. Massa- chusetts.
(4) A special article on the same topie—the second of a series —containing the results of our investigations and experiments on this subject for the last two years.
(5) An elaborate report on the experiments of last year with arsenical poisons for the codling moth in the apple orchard, published as a bulletin of the office. The first edition of five hundred copies of this bulletin was soon exhausted and a second was issued.
(6) We have likewise published and distributed widely two general circulars on the chinch bug in southern [linois.
(7) I have also prepared two addresses to farmers’ institutes— on insects injurious to corn, and on apple insects— and have delivered one or the other of these addresses at eight farmers’ institutes dur- ing the winter and spring.
(8) A descriptive paper prepared by Mr. Weed, on certain parasites of the insects of the apple orchard, is now in press as one of the articles of the Laboratory bulletin.
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(9) We have also on hand, ready for publication, an illustrated . synopsis of one of the families of the Homoptera of [llinois (Jas- side), by Mr. C. W. Woodworth, a former assistant in the office.
(10) A monograph on one of the families of the parasitic fungi of the State (Krysipheew), by Professor Burrill and Mr. F. S. Earle, has been finished during the quarter and is now in press for the bulletin of the Laboratory.
(11) Professor Burrill has also nearly ready for printing, re- ports on two other families of Illinois fungi ( Ustilaginew and Pero- nosporee ).
(12) The first volume of the zoological report, covering the entire ornithology of the State, has been long in press. but makes very slow progress, because two copies of the proof of the part now printing must go successively to Washington. The four hundred and thirty-second page has now been reached by the printer.
The additions to the equipment of the Laboratory, made during the last quarter, are not especially important, but are confined chiefly to the usual increase of the library and to several pieces of the ap- paratus of microscopy and bacteria culture.
During the coming summer, besides carrying forward the econo- mic work of the entomological office on the largest scale which our resources will at all permit— giving especial prominence to field ex- periment (a new feature of our work )—I hope also to make decided progress in our knowledge of the aquatic life of the State—especially in its lowest forms—and for that purpose expect to establish tem- porarily a station on one of the lakes of northern Illimois, fully equipped from the Laboratory for careful and thorough aquatie work.
Beyond the customary routine action on the appropriations of the Laboratory, I have no especial requests to make of the Board at this meeting.
Respectfully submitted, S. A. FORBES, Director of Laboratory.
June 6, 1887.
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BIENNIAL REPORT
H. J. VANCLEAVE a
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS r
URBANA, ILLINOI8, \ ay
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STATE LABORATORY OF NATURAL HISTORY, ——GHAMPaIGN, LINoIS i | “
OcToBER 31, 1888. a
PAST a ee GAZETTE PRINT, CHAMPAIGN. We ?
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BIENNIAL REPORT OF THE ILLINOIS STATE LABORA- TORY OF NATURAL HISTORY.
STEPHEN A. FORBES, Pu. D., DIRECTOR.
Dr. S. H. Peabody, Regent of the Cees,
Sir: In accordance with the suggestion of the Committee on Publication, I have the honor to transmit herewith to the Trustees of the University, for publication in their biennial report, a statement of the operations of the State Laboratory of Natural History, under my direction, for the two years closing October 31, 1888,—this being substantially a summary of the quarterly reports made to the Board at their regular meetings.
The work of the Laboratory is twofold, relating on the one hand to the natural history survey of the State (formally authorized and organized by the Legislature of 1884-85), and on the other, to the State Entomologist’s Office (established in 1867), the working. funds of which are all derived, under existing arrangements, from the Laboratory appropriations. As State Entomologist, I am directly responsible only to the Governor; but the entomological and the general zoological work going on under my charge are so intimately blended that i cannot well report upon one without including the other; and as both are now supported by State appropriations ad- ministered by this Board, I have thought best to include both in this statement.
ORGANIZATION.
The working force of the Laboratory for the past two years has included a Director, serving without salary;* a botanist, Prof. T. J. Burrill; a botanical assistant, Mr. M. B. Waite; a zoological us- sistant, Prof. W. H. Garman; two _entomological assistants, one especially assigned to field work, Mr. C. M. Weed, succeeded by Mr.
*The item of $2,000 per annum appropriated as salary of the Director of the Laboratory (Laws of Illinois, 35th General Assembly p. 71, Sec. 1) is not
drawn or available as long as that officer is also State Entomologist. (Laws of Illinois, 34th General Assembly p. 24, Sec. 4.)
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John Marten, and one to office entomology, Mr. C. A. Hart; an amanuensis, Miss M. J. Snyder; and a janitor. Drawing and other miscellaneous assistance is variously provided for according to cir- cumstances.
Our operations may be conveniently reported under the heads, Investigation, Office Work, Publication, and General Educational Work.
INVESTIGATION.
The original investigations of the Laboratory now run along three general lines, never wholly distinct, but still usually distinguishable, —those of general zoology, entomology, and cryptogamic botany.
General Zoology.
Our researches in general zoology have been chiefly directed, during the past two years, to the aquatic animal life of the State, which we are studying systematically both in detail and as a whole, working at the identification, description, and illustration of the species; at their distribution, haunts, food, and habits; at their rela- tions to each other where they are thrown-together, as in the same lake or stream; at their relations to nature generally, as determined by climate, season, quantity and quality of water, and the like; and at their relations to man as affeeting the maintenance and increase of the food supply derived or derivable from the waters of the State,— aiming thus to present finally a picture of the aquatic life of Illinois, both plant and animal, in a form suited to attract the interest of the intelligent citizen, to instruct the student, and to contribute to the economic welfare of the State. Our work in this direction has lately come into close and, I hope, mutually helpful relation tp that of the State Fish Commission, as [ shall show more fully when reporting upon the investigations of the present season.
Field work on our aquatic zoology has fallen chiefly to Prof. Garman, Mr. Hart, and myself. In 1887 we thoroughly studied several of the smaller lakes of northern Illinois, and one of us spent a fortnight on one of the larger lakes of southern Wisconsin, mak- ing soundings, dredgings, and surface-net collections for compari- son with those from the smaller lakes of the same series in our own State.
Large colleetions illustrative of the food of fishes were made at Quincy and Havana the latter part of the summer by Prof. Garman and myself, the material thus obtained enabling me to
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bring to a conclusion the general study of that subject, which I have had in hand since 1880.
Beginning in November, 1887, surface-net collections have been made twice a week for the Laboratory from the waters of Lake Michi- gan, off Chicago, (except when the ice prevented, ) to enable us to follow the succession, development, and relative abundance, at differ- ent seasons, of the forms of animal life upon which we have found ~ the young of the principal food fishes to be strictly dependent.
During the season of 1888 we have had extraordinary opportu- nities for aquatic work afforded us by the State Fish Commission through its Secretary, Mr. 8. P. Bartlett. Lack of time and assist- ance prevented my taking as much advantage as I would have been glad to do of the facilities generously placed at our disposal; but a good beginning was made in July and the latter part of August on a more systematic and thorough-going survey of the life of our waters than we have heretofore been able to undertake. Working from the wharf-boat of the Commissioners as head-quarters and usually accom- panying their field parties, but with boats and asssistants under his own control, Prof. Garman made an especially careful examination of those waters from which young fishes were being taken for dis- tribution throughout the State, studying the plant and animal forms of such situations, noting the size, depth, condition, and surroundings | of the bodies of water visited, and collecting all information of every description which could aid us in the preparation of a full and exact account of the assemblage of forms and the system of life exhibited. We learned from these studies enough to show the very remarkable and far-reaching differences occasioned here by differences of situa- .tion with,respect to the amount and period of overflow, and to fully open up to us this inviting subject of investigation as affecting all the river systems of the State. A general report on this work, made with principal reference to its relations to the operations of the State Fish Commissioners, is now in course of preparation, and will be submitted to them when finished. A more detailed exhibit of the scientific results will be published in the Bulletin of the Laboratory.
I hope to have hereafter the funds and assistance to carry stud- ies of this description steadily forward through all the working season, moving the field head-quarters from place to place as cireum- stances may require.
Good progress has been made at the Laboratory in the study and description of all our recent aquatic collections.
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Under the head of general zoology comes my own personal study of the food and feeding habits and structures of several families of our fishes,—to which much time was given in the winter of 1887-88,— and the preparation of a general summary and discussion of the whole series of papers on this topic published by me since 1880.
Minor labors in the same general field are a study of the species of harvestmen (Phalangide) of Mlinois by Mr. Weed, on the anatomy and histology of certain crustaceans of subterranean habit by myself, and on the leaf mites of the State by Prof. Garman.
Entomology.
The entomological work of the past two years has been almost wholly economic in its objects, but incidental to the study of insect injuries to agriculture, a considerable mass of information and ma- terial has been accumulated, of more general entomological interest.
The purely economic work has been extraordinarily heavy and exacting, due especially to a wide-spread and very destructive out- break of the chinch bug, now but just disappearing. We have kept the infested area, both in southern and northern Illinois, under in- spection during the whole two years, making repeated visits to selected localities for comparative observations in the field. At Edge- wood, in Effingham county, and at Tonti, in Marion county, we have conducted field experiments for the protection of wheat against chinch bug injury—in the former instances with great success, in the latter with only partial results, owing to the winter-killing of the grain. At the office we have made numerous tests and experiments with insecticides. r
During the summer and autumn of 1888, we have egllected a. very large amount of information from every part of the State con- cerning the effect on the chinch bug of different crops and combin- ations of crops, with especial reference to wheat culture, and have collated, tabulated, and discussed this information, deriving from it important practical generalizations with respect to farm management during the progress of a chinch bug uprising.
We have also diligently studied three forms of contagious dis- ease to whose virulent activity in the southern part of the State is chiefly due the rapid disappearance of the larger part of the chinch bug hosts infesting that region,—a difficult and laborious research which is still in progress.
Next to the chinch bug, the Hessian fly and the corn plant louse
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have received the largest share of our attention. During both sum- mers periodical sowings of wheat were made in southern [llinois on selected plots, from harvest to the usual seeding time in fall, to de- termine more precisely the summer history of the fly. Those of 1887 failed because of the extreme drouth, but those of 1888 con- firmed the results of symilar experiments made by us in 1886. Office experiments with this insect are now in progress.
The corn plant louse we have studied by careful field npeeeeation and by continuous breeding experiments in the laboratory, made es- pecially during fall and spring. These experiments have determined the spring and winter history of the root louse; and others made by enclosing hills of corn in the field with large gauze-covered frames have thrown much light on the midsummer history and breeding habits of this species. We are now carrying this insect through the winter in the botanical conservatory under conditions to give us ad- ditional information concerning it. Colonies of the small brown ant to whose ministrations these plant lice are especially indebted, have been artificially reared and regularly observed through the season to determine their life history and habits.
Several species of our cutworms have been bred by us for the first time,—one, phenomenally destructive this year throughout the whole State, never before identified nor noticed.
We have made, both years, studies of the web worms injuring corn and grass lands, with experiments for their destruction.
In the spring and early summer of 1888 we made many elabo- rate experiments with ao for the destruction of wireworms in corn. :
In 1887 the life history and habits of an insect destructive to meadows,—the larva of one of the crane flies not before known as injurious,—was ascertained by field and laboratory observations; studies were made of some of the insects most injurious to nursery stock; additional experiments were conducted for the control of in- juries to fruits by the codling moth; the life history, species, and habits of a new plum borer were determined; considerable systematic and biological work was done on a large number of plant louse species, and an elaborate research was carried forward on the conta- gious diseases of the army worm, several species of cutworms, and the cabbage caterpillar.
In 1888 we also learned the habits, developmert, and history of a large snout beetle responsible for a frequent and extensive injury
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to corn not before understood, and discovered means of avoiding its ravages; and made elaborate studies, by the method of dissection, of the food and feeding habits of the snout beetles generally, throwing light, by this means, on the most serviceable measures for preventing their injuries to fruit.
Botanical Work. *
Studies of the fungi of I[llinois—principally those known as parasites,—causes of disease among plants and animals,—have been carried continuously forward, chiefly, as heretofore, under the im- mediate charge of Prof. T. J. Burrill. Large collections have been made during the past two years, chiefly by the botanical assistant, Mr. Waite, in Edwards, Wabash, Ogle, Lake, and Carroll counties; and work of this description has gone forward, almost without intermission, in the neighborhood of the Laboratory.
An extremely destructive disease of broom-corn and sorghum, due to bacterial infection, has been thoroughly worked out by Prof. Burrill, and measures of avoiding its attack have been discoy- ered; and a study is well under way of a similar but more important disease of Indian corn, found by us widely prevalent from Edwards county to Kankakee county.
Careful and elaborate studies are also in progress of the bacteria and other plant parasites which we have found to cause contagious disease among insects,—those of the chinch bug having been inyes- tigated with especial thoroughness.
, OFFICE WORK.
The office assistants have been chiefly engaged on the corre- spondence, in the preparation of the manuscript for the entomologi- cal report and for the bulletins published since 1886, in proof read- ing of these and of the volume on the ornithology of the State— the latter read twice because once destroyed by fire,—in the cata- loguing and indexing of new books and periodicals received, in the preparation of two elaborate bibliographies,—one including all the entomological writings of our first two State Entomologists, Walsh and LeBaron, and the other covering the literature of the chinch bug,—in making the numerous charts, diagrams, and drawings used in illustration of lectures—especially those to farmers’ insti- tutes; in collecting from nearly nine hundred townsbip assessors the facts concerning chinch bug injury to the principal farm crops, in
¢ ting from the assessors’ reports for 1887 the acreage in each
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crop for all townships in the State, and in collating and tabulating this mass of information—a work which occupied the time of two assistants for many weeks of the present summer and autumn.
Under this head should also come the care of the entomological breeding room by Mr. Hart, the preparation, determination, and ar- rangement of the thousands of specimens collected, and the keeping of the voluminous records, catalogues, and indexes of collections.
PUBLICATIONS.
Our regular publications run in four series, two from the Labo- ratory and two from the Office of the State Entomologist,—the former comprising the State zoological report and the bulletins of the State Laboratory of Natural History, and the latter the biennial entomological report and the bulletins of the entomological office.
During the past two years we have finished the printing of the first volume on the zoology of the State,—containing five hundred and twenty pages of text and forty-six plates,—devoted to the orni- soley of Illinois as far as the water birds. This is a reprint of the volume, the first edition having been entirely destroyed in the burn- ing of the office of the State Printer last February.
As bulletins of the State Laboratory of Natural History we have issued an article on one of the families of parasitic fungi of the State (Erysiphee) by Prof. T. J. Burrill and Mr. F. 8. Earle, (forty-five pages,) two papers by myself on the food and feeding habits and structures of alimentation of the fishes of Illinois (one hundred and five pages), one by Prof. H. Garman on the anatomy and histology of a new genus of earthworm (thirty pages), one by Mr. C. W. Woodworth on the classification of one of the families of homopterous insects of the State (twenty-four pages), and two papers on insect parasites by Mr. C. M. Weed, (fourteen pages).
The entomological report for 1885-86 has lain unpublished to the present time, caught in the general obstruction of the public printing growing out of the State-printing controversy, but is un- derstood to be now in press.
As bulletins of the entomological office, we have issued an elabo- rate report on the experiments of the years 1885-86 with arsenical poisons for the codling moth in the apple orchard, an article on the chinch bug outbreak, with recommendations for its control, and an article on the life history of the Hessian fly, setting forth the results of our field experiments on the subject. We have also issued several entomological circulars not of any series.
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Articles written at the Laboratory, but published elsewhere, in- clude a paper on the present state of our knowledge concerning con- tagious insect diseases, prepared as a presidential address for the En- tomological Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and published in ‘‘Psyche,” the organ of the Club; a paper on the food of the fishes of the Mississippi Valley, read at the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the American Fisheries Society in Detroit, Michigan, and pub- lished in their ‘‘ Transactions” and also as a separate pamphlet; a paper on the relations of wheat culture to chinch bug injury, read at the Cleveland meeting of the Society for the Promotion of Agri- cultural Science and published in their ‘Proceedings;” an address as president of the Western Naturalists’ Association, delivered at Champaign and published in the “American Naturalist;” four papers for the State Horticultural Society by myself and Mr. Weed, printed in the annual volumes of the Society; three technical entomological articles by Mr. Weed and two by myself, printed in “Psyche” and Entomologica Americana; and a considerable number of articles written for the agricultural papers in response to inquiries from their editors. Here also should be mentioned an article by Prof. Burrill, giving the results of his study of the broom-corn disease already re- ferred to,— this paper being published in the Proceedings of the Society of American Microscopists for 1887.
GENERAL EDUCATIONAL WORK.
Among addresses made by the office force but not regularly pub- lished, are seven on entomological topics, prepared for farmers’ insti- tutes and delivered twenty-six times in all; one on the chinch bug, delivered six times before county conventions called to adopt meas- ures for joint action against that insect pest; two on educational topics before the State Teachers’ Association and the Teachers’ Asso- ciation for Central Illinois; and one read to the Peoria Scientific Association and at the commencement exercises of the State Uni- versity of Indiana.
RELATIONS TO THE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION.
The recent organization, at the University, of the State Agri- cultural Experiment Station has raised the question of the relations of the work thus instituted to that of the Natural History Labora- tory and the State Entomologist’s Office with the effect to bring about an adjustment of the two at their points of contact in crypte- gamic botany and economic entomology. The purpose of the State Laboratory being essentially scientific and educational, its results are
only incidentally economic; while the purposes of the Experiment Station are essentially economic, and its scientific work must naturally be regulated with close reference to practical results. In cryptogamic botany, for example, the Laboratory is engaged in a general survey of the State intended to give us the species, the classification, and the life histories of all our flowerless plants, whether economically im- portant or not, and the relations of these to agriculture will come in as a purely secondary matter; while in Experiment Station work, on the other hand, little attention will probably be paid to any species except those having economic relations. All practical botanists are agreed, however, that the economic species and those of no economic importance are so intimately related in classification, habit, and life history, that a full and exhaustive knowledge of the whole subject is very helpful, and often indispensable, for the solution of merely econo- mic problems. The more, in short, the State Laboratory is able to do in technical and biological botany, the easier and more fruitful will be the economic work of the botanical department of the Station. The former should, in fact, supply a broad and strong foundation on which the latter may build elaborately.
As much of the work in the two directions requires substantially the same facilities, methods, skill, and knowledge, the two may be easily combined in a way to economize labor and expense and to in- crease results, the only requisite being a common scheme of sub-— division and adjustment of subjects of research, and a proper arrange- ment with respect to assistance, separate and conjoint, in the two de- partments.
Substantially the same may be said of the entomological work, except that here the State has provided fairly well. for many years, for both scientific and economic entomology. The line of division and co-operation naturally suggested is that of the practical applica- tion in the field, of economic results obtained in the office. This is so essential a part of our economic work that I have felt compelled to take it up, and have conducted in southern Illinois several field experiments relating to insect injuries to wheat. But this field ex- perimentation does not properly belong to entomology; it is very ex- pensive in time and money; and I shall be glad to be wholly relieved from it. On the other hand, I have undertaken to determine insects referred to me as of economic interest by those engaged in the Ex- periment Station work; to study their life histories; and to make office experiments with respect to them, as far as our resources will
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permit, reporting results for such verification in the field as may seem to be required.
NEEDS OF THE WORK.
For the future we need especially an entomological laboratory, that we may conduct our experimental work on a larger scale and under conditions completely under our control. The necessity we are now under for traveling one hundred and fifty miles every time we wish to make an observation on the Hessian fly or the chinch bug, because we cannot arrange breeding frames large enough to contain a sufficient number of these insects and their food; and our failure, after four years’ work, to make out some of the indispensable points in the life history and habits of the corn plant louse because we have no sufficient means of keepmg this species under observation without exposing our specimens to conditions so unnatural that they soon perish, are illustrations of the disadvantages under which we work. To supply this lack I shall have to ask from the Legislature an appropriation of $1000 for the erection and furnishing of a suita- ble building for the breeding of insects, the rearing of their food plants, and other experimental work of this description. Otherwise, the appropriations now required need not vary materially from those made at the last session of the Legislature.
Respectfully submitted, S. A. FORBES, Director of Laboratory. October 31, 1888.
BIENNIAL REPORT
DIRECTOR
[LELNOIS STATE
LABORATORY OF NATURAL HISTORY
CHAMPAIGN ILLINOIS
1589-1590
J. W. FRANKS & SONS PRINTERS, BINDERS AND E
oe
F, ‘ oh me 2 7 er “4 A / nf 4 . .
BIENNIAL REPORT OF THE ILLINOIS STATE LABORATORY OF NATURAL HISTORY.*
Dr. 8S. H. Peabody, Regent of the University -
Srr: In accordance with the spirit (although, I must con- fess, not strictly with the letter) of a resolution adopted by the Trustees of the University July 1, 1885, to the effect that the Director of the State Laboratory of Natural History should make to the Trustees, through the Regent, quarterly reports of the affairs and operations of the Laboratory, I beg to offer this report of our affairs during the last two years.
The organization of this establishment and its operations during this time have differed but little in scope and general character from those reported to the Trustees in 1888.t
The staff of the Laboratory during the last two years has consisted of a botanist, Prof. Burrill,—engaged for only a small part of his time; a botanical assistant, alternately Mr. Moses Craig and Mr. G. P. Clinton; an office entomologist, Mr. C. A. Hart; a field entomologist, Mr, John Marten; a zodlogical assistant, Mr. H. S. Brode (giving the Laboratory such part of his services as were not appropriated by the University); an amanuensis, Miss M. J. Snyder; and an artist, Mr. A. M. Wes- tergren, employed in drawing (chiefly entomological ) for only seven months. The salaries of those whose time is divided be- tween the Laboratory and University are derived in part from each source, in amounts proportioned as nearly as may be to their services for each. The botanist has received from the Laboratory $200 a year, the botanical assistants full pay for time actually spent on Laboratory work, and the zodlogical
*For financial statement for the two years ending June 30, 1890, see Fifteenth Report of the Board of Trustees of the Univer- sity of Illinois, pp. 92, 177.
+ See Fourteenth Report of the Board of Trustees of the Uni- versity of Illinois, p. 185.
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assistant $100 for the present year only. The salaries of the office entomologist, field entomologist, and amanuensis (who acts also as librarian) have been, respectively, 3600, $900, and $600.
Owing to changes of assistants, indirectly due to the or- ganization of a large number of new state agricultural experi- ment stations, the general zodlogical work of the State Natural History Survey has materially fallen off, but relatively greater | attention has been given to economic investigation. The zodlogical work has been limited to considerable additions to the ornithological collections, made for a further study of the food of birds; and desultory studies on the lower aquatic ani- mals of the state, especially insect larvee, Vermes, and Protozoa. The progress of our knowledge of the aquatic zodlogy of Illi- nois has been indirectly advanced by vacation work done out- side our state limits,— during the summer of 1889 in northern Michigan and Lake Superior, and during that of 1890 in the lakes and streams of the northern Rocky Mountains. Reports on these collections have been prepared, or are in course of preparation, for publication by the U.S. Fish Commissioner, and as this material is studied, our similar and parallel collec- tions from this state are studied with it, to the great advantage of the local work.
Our entomological investigations have been, as heretofore, almost wholly economic in their motive; nevertheless, no oppor- tunity has been lost to improve our acquaintance with the in- sects of Illinois, whether economically interesting or not. The building of an insectary and separate office (the former devoted to experimental work upon the life histories of insects, their injuries to vegetation, and methods of practically controlling them) has given us an opportunity not before enjoyed for con- tinuous observation and accurate experiment on some of the most difficult species. The principal subjects which we have studied are the life histories of cutworms, the contagious dis- eases of the chinch bug, the life history of the corn root louse and of the species of ant uniformly associated with it, the feeding habits of the plum and peach curculio with insecticide experiments for its destruction on the peach, the stages and life history of a new plum borer, the injuries to fruit by the
3
common Thrips or strawberry “ midget,” the injuries and life history of the little-known corn root worm, the spring and summer history of the Hessian fly, and the life histories of the common white grubs and wireworms. Other subjects of in- terest studied are injuries to fruit trees by the European bark beetle, the damage to wheat, oats, and other grains by the grain Aphis, the life history of the swamp bill bug, the species and life histories of a considerable number of gall gnats, and the breeding, identification, and description of common aquatic larve from temporary pools in spring. Especially important progress has been made in our knowledge of the history and habits of some of the commonest and most destructive insects of the farm, including the white grubs, the Hessian fly, and the corn root louse.
The entomological collection has been greatly enlarged, especially in Diptera, and a large number of determinations in all orders have been made. The named collection is now con- tained in 160 double boxes, and numbers about 5,000 species, each being represented, as a rule, by four selected specimens. The pinned and determined duplicate insects on hand — largely in process of distribution to public schools — amount to 42,600 specimens. The alcoholic insects, including large numbers of larve, are contained in about 10,200 bottles and vials.
Seven hundred and forty-four copies of the zvdlogical vol- ume—the first on the ornithology of the state—have been issued up to the present time (Dec. 31, 1890), 732 of them gratuitously, 656 in Illinois and 76 outside of the state, and 12 have been sold at cost ($3.50 a volume). There remain of the edition printed 256 copies, 200 of which we have reserved for future use.
There have been printed since my last statement two of my reports as State Entomologist, that for the years 1885 and 1886 —long delayed in the hands of the printer — having finally been issued in 1889, and the report for 1887 and 1888, in 1890. Each of these reports contains seven articles; the first 103 pages and the second 226 pages.
In the Bulletin of the Laboratory six articles have been issued in the last two years, one on the animals of the Missis- sippi bottoms, by Prof. H. Garman; two by myself, describing
4
new species of Vermes; two by Mr. Weed, on the “ harvest- men” of Illinois; and one by Prof. Garman, on Illinois rep- tiles and amphibians —110 pages in all.
Other articles prepared at the Laboratory during the period covered by this report, but published elsewhere, are as follows: ‘*Note on Chinch-Bug Diseases,” ‘‘ Early Occurrence of the Chinch Bug in the Mississippi Valley,” ‘‘Arsenical Poisons for the Plum and Peach Curculio,” “ Office and Laboratory Urgani- zation,” ‘‘ History and Status of Public School Science Work in Illinois,” ‘* New and Old Insects,” and a “Synopsis of Re-- cent Work with Arsenical Insecticides,” by myself, and a de- scription of a new gall-fly by Mr. John Marten.
Other articles prepared by us and now in press, are as fol- lows: “On Some Lake Superior Entomostraca,” “ Preliminary Report upon the Invertebrate Animals inhabiting Lakes Ge- neva and Mendota, Wisconsin,” ‘A Summary History of the Corn-Root Aphis,” “On the Life History of the White Grubs,” and ‘Report of Progress in Economic Entomology,” by myself; ‘Life History and Immature Stages of Wireworms,” by Mr. C. A. Hart; and ‘‘ New Notes on the Life History of the Hessian Fly,” by Mr. Marten.
I have addressed, during the two years, fourteen farmers’ institutes in various parts of the state and three horticultural societies, and have also lectured before the Chicago Institute and the Cincinnati Natural History Society.
The accumulation of duplicate insects has reached a point where it is again possible to distribute them to advantage to such public schools as teach regularly the subjects they illus- trate. I consequently sent in 1889, a circular of inquiry to a number of these schools, from the replies to which a list of schools was made to which sets of insects will be sent during the winter. The specimens available for this distribution (22,000 in number) will be made up into forty sets and sent out as fast as ready, with lists of names, both technical and common, and a pamphlet of economic notes respecting the species related in any important way to agriculture or horti- culture. The amount of work involved in this distribution may be judged in part by the fact that the mere numbering and arrangement of this material in boxes, ready for shipment,
5
after the labor of collection, preservation, determination, and systematic classification is all done, will take all the time of one assistant for about a month.
Our work of the past two years has been greatly hampered by the insufficiency of cur library fund, and the loss of valuable assistants with years of experience on our subjects and train- ing in our methods, and more useful here than any one else could be for a long time to come. This loss was due simply to inadequate provision for their salaries. If this work is to con- tinue on its present basis, it is indispensable that our library appropriation be put back to what it was two years ago, and that sufficient allowance be made for salaries to enable me to hold good assistants in competition with experiment stations and other institutions offering employment to able and well- trained young men.
Respectfully submitted,
S. A. FORBES,
Director of Laboratory. December 31, 1890.
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SPRINGFIELD, ILL: H. W. ROKKER, STATE PRINTER AND BINDER. 1892.
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BIENNIAL REPORT OF THE ILLINOIS STATE LABORATORY OF NATURAL HISTORY.
To the Trustees of the University :
GENTLEMEN: In conformity to the recommendation of a special committee on the the status of the State Laboratory of Natural History, whose report was made to you June 8, 1892, and in anticipation of your action on that recommendation, I beg to submit the following general report on the operations of the Laboratory during the two years just past.
The functions of the Lavoratory, as most recently de- fined by the legislature, in the law of 1885, are the making of a natural history survey of the State, the supply of natural history specimens to the State mu- seum, the State educational institutions, and the public schools, and the publication of a systematic series of reports on the zodlogy and the cryptogamic botany of the State. Its operations now cover, under authoriza- tion of the same law, those of the State Entomologist, which were described by the law establishing that office in 1867 to be the investigation of the entomology of the State (particularly the history of insects injurious to horticulture and agriculture in Illinois), the collec- tion of a cabinet of insects to be deposited in the Uni- versity of Illinois, and the preparation of biennial reports of the entomological researches and discoveries made at the office.
The work of the establishment is further necessarily cuided to a considerable extent by the appropriation laws in force; and by authority of these laws we are publish-
/ 3)
ing, in addition to the two series of reports above mentioned, a third series of miscellaneous articles, con- taining only original work on the natural history of the State, issued in the form of bulletins of the Laboratory. Our operations during the past two years have been also greatly influenced by legislation concerning the Columbian Exposition, by which it is made our duty to exhibit the methods and the results of the work oi the Laboratory. The State Board of Exposition Commis- sioners looks to this institution, in fact, for a display of the zodlogy of the State, prepared and arranged with special reference to our work.
ORGANIZATION.
The regular Laboratory force, to July, 1891, consisted of the undersigned, serving as Director and State Ento- mologist; Professor Burrill, of the University, as bota- nist; ©. A. Hart as office entomologist; John Marten as field entomologist; A.M. Westergren as artist; and Mary J. Snyder as secretary and stenographer. During a part of this year H. 8. Brode, of the University, served as zoOlogical assistant, H. C. Forbes as librarian, and 8. Shiga as janitor.
The same staff was continued to July, 1892, with the substitution of Miss Lilly M. Hart as artist, in place of Mr, Westergren. Since July, we have had engaged on reeular laboratory work, in addition to the foregoing but with the exception of Professor Burrill, Philip M. Hucke in entomology, sueceeded by W. A. Snow. We have further employed on the preparation of the zodlogical exhibit of the Laboratory at the Columbian Exposition, CO. I. Adams, taxidermist, and Hugo Kahl as his as- sistant; H. E. Summers, entomologist; fF. M. Woodruff and Ernest Forbes, ornithological collectors; F. M. Mckliresh, entomological assistant; and C. T. Wilder, succeeded by J. E. Hallinen, engaged in making a col- lection of the fishes of the State—all this last group being paid by the World’s Fair Commissioners.
5
The force actually under engagement at any one time has varied from six to sixteen.
INVESTIGATION.
The investigations of the Laboratory during the period covered by this report have followed the same gen- eral direction as during the two years preceding, but with closer concentration on entomology than I like—a defect which I hope to avoid hereaiter by changes in organization.
Progress in our knowledge of the general zoology of the State has been immediately furthered by a consid- erable amount of work done on waters outside our lim- its by myself and my assistants, during our vacations, under the auspices and at the expense of the United States Fish Commission. One able to appreciate the fact that the life of no region can be thoroughly studied without a knowledge of that of other regions, adjacent and remote, and that in those departments of natural history where new forms must be described it is indis- pensable that opportunity should be had for a compari- son of collections made over a large extent of country, will understand the advantages to our own studies which this extension of our aquatic work outside the State must bring us inthe end. The parties kept in the field ever since last fall on behalf of the Exposition col- leetions, have also added considerable material and in- formation available for the purposes of our natural history survey. I need, however, as I have needed for some years, a zodlogical assistant, whose time should go continuously to the zodlogical survey outside of ento- mology. In the entomological department of the sur- vey, Exposition work has likewise aided us immensely. The collections and various studies which this work has required in all parts of the State, have given us a mass of facts and material equivalent, I think, to the product of five years of our ordinary operations.
: 4
The principal trips made by the entomological assist- ants for these collections and investigations are thirty- two in number, and cover, for the two years, 298 days’ absence in the field at a distance from Champaign. The ornithological field work includes a trip of two months to Louisiana, made by Mr. Adams for the collection of Illinois birds in their winter quarters; three weeks’ shooting in southern Illinois by two assistants; five more by one assistant in the northern part of the State, besides six weeks’ collecting in Champaign county. In ichthyology, one or two men have been out continuously for three and a half months.
Our outside aquatic operations include a journey to Yellowstone Park and western Montana by Mr. Brode and myself, covering five weeks, in 1891, and trips by myself and two assistants to Geneva, Delavan, and Win- nebago lakes, in Wisconsin, occupying four weeks in all. I need not say that our trips of this description were not mere expeditions for the collection of specimens, but that they were attended and followed by field and labo- atory studies of the waters, their surroundings, and their contents.
I may add, under this head, brief mention of the ex- perimental work in economic entomology done at my office. The most important subject of precise investiga- tion belonging here is that of the contagious diseases of insects, upon which we have worked almost continu- ously in the experimental way since the spring of 1891. Artificial cultures of the fureus parasite found most efficient for the propagation ‘of such diseases have been made on a large scale, and ‘supplied to all applicants from this State in sufficient. quantities to enable them to start disease among injurious insects on their premises.
We also experimented last year with the fruit bark beetle, the white grubs, and the Hessian fly, with a view to clearing up doubtful points in the life history of each ; and with respect to the species last mentioned, we under-
5 took, at the request of the United States Entomologist, the introduction of one of its foreign parasites into the wheat fields of [linois.
A very large amount of entomological breeding-cage work has been done by us in the two years just past, but of a kind which it is impossible to summarize. Something of the amount of general work done in en- tomology may be inferred from the fact that we have added to the pinned collections fully 20,000 specimens, and to the “biological” series, that illustrating the life history and habits of Illinois insects, 2,700 bottles and vials.
PUBLICATIONS.
The regular publications of the Laboratory and Ento.- mologist’s office during the past two years have been less numerous than usual; but the matter now in press and far advanced in printing is, on the other hand, unu- sually important. .
My sixth report as State Entomologist, the seven- teenth of the entire series. was printed in 1891. It con- tains 105 pages and seven plates, three of which are colored, with an appendix of 36 pages and one plate. One of the articles of this report was issued separately in advance, as a bulletin of the office. My seventh re- port is now in course of preparation.
A second edition of the first volume of our report on the ornithology of the State, authorized by the legisla- ture at its last session, has been long delayed, owing to difficulties concerning the supply of paper. These have been met, however, by the State Board of Contracts, and the printing from our stereotyped plates is in prog- ress at the time of writing. This volume stops with the Columbide, but a continuation and completion of this work on the systematic ornithology of the State has also been printed, and is now nearly ready for distribu- tion as a first part of the second volume of the zodlog- ical series of the Natural History Survey.
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Three articles have been published as bulletins of the Laboratory: one by Professor Weed on a plant louse species, one by Professor Gillette on new gall flies in the Laboratory collections, and one by myself on insect bacteria. We have now in press in this series, and nearly ready for distribution, a full descriptive monograph of the reptiles and amphibians of the State (173 pages and seven plates), by Professor Garman, and a similiarly ex- haustive account of the [Illinois species of one of the families of true bugs (Membracid), by Dr. F. W. Goding.
Besides these regular publications we have prepared and printed, in connection with the distribution of col- lections to be referred to later, two lists, one of dupli- cate insects in the collection of the Laboratory (nine- teen pages), and one a list of economic species for publie schools (thirteen pages).
The following is a list of papers by the Laboratory force, published during the two years, the work for which has been done at the Laboratory.
Forbes, S. A.—Synopsis of Recent Work with Arsenical Insecti- cides. (Trans. Ill. State Hort. Soc., 1889, p. 310.)
On a Bacterial Insect Disease. (North American Practitione °, 1891, p. 401; Am. Monthly Micr. Journ., 1891, p. 246.) Bacteria Normal to Digestive Organs of Hemiptera. (Bull.
Ill. State Lab. Nat. Hist., iv, page 1.)
On Some Lake Superior Entomostraca. (Rep. U. 8S. Fish Comm., 1887, p. 701.)
Preliminary Report upon the Invertebrate Animals inhabit- ing Lakes Geneva and Mendota, Wisconsin, with an Ac- count of the Fish Epidemic in Lake Mendota in 1884. (Bull. U. S. Fish Comm., viii, p. 478.)
A Summary History of the Corn-Root Aphis. (Insect Life, iii, p. 233.)
On the Life History of the White Grubs. (Insect Life iii., p. 239.)
Report of Progress in Economic Entomology. (Proc. 4th Ann. Convention Ass’n Am. Agr. Colleges and Exper. Stations : in Misc. Bull. No. 3, U. S. Dept. Agr., Office Exper. Sta- tions, p. 29.)
The Hessian Fly. (Bull. Univ. Agr. Exper. Station, No. 12, p. ditt)
“|
Forbes, 8S. A.—Continued.
The Fruit Bark Beetle. (Bull. 4, Office State Entomologist Il.; Bull. Univ. Ill. Agr. Exper. Station, No. 15, p. 469.)
Zodlogy in the Public School: Choice and Arrangement of Material. (Public School Journ., xi, pp. 230, 375, 429.)
The Head of the English Sparrow. (Prepared in accordance with a requirement of the law of the legislature, passed at its last session, offering a bounty for the destruction of sparrows.)
The Chinch Bug in Illinois, 1891-92. (Bull. Univ. Ill. Agr. Ex- per. Station, No. 19, p. 44.)
An All-around Microscope. (Am. Monthly Micr. Journ., 1892, p. 91.)
The Fruit-Destroying Insects of Southern Illinois. (Trans. Nii. Hort. Soc., 1891, p. 116.)
The Importation of a Hessian Fly Parasite from Europe. (In- sect Life, iv, p. 179.)
Seventeenth, Report of the State Entomologist on the Noxious and Beneficial Insects of the State of Illinois. Contents.— The Fruit Bark Beetle. Experiments with Arsenical Poisons for the Peach and Plum Curculio. The American Plum Borer. Onthe Common White Grubs. Additional Notes on the Hessian Fly. A Summary History of the Corn Root Aphis. On a Bacterial Disease of the Larger Corn Root Worm. Notes on the Diseases of the Chinch Bug. Ap- pendix.—An Analytical List of the Entomological Writings of Wm. LeBaron, M. D., Second State Entomologist of Hlinois.
Marten, John.—Various entomological articles, published as En-
tomological Editor of the ‘Prairie Farmer,” Chicago, I.
Hart. Charles A.—The Life History of Wireworms. (Insect Life, iii, p. 246.)
On the Species of Gicanthus. (Entomological News, iii, p. 33.)
Additional papers, prepared but not yet printed, are a presidential address on ‘‘The Progress of Economic Entomology during the vears 1891 and 1892,” deliv- ered by myself at the meeting of the American Associa- tion of Economic Entomologists at Rochester, N. Y.: my preliminary report to the United States Fish Com- missioner, on the ‘‘Aquatic Invertebrate Fauna of Yel- lowstone Park, Wyoming, and of the Flathead Region of Montana;’’ and two important papers, now in the hands of my assistants, well advanced towards comple-
j ra)
tion; the first by Mr. Marten, containing descriptions of new species of Illinois gall gnats, and the other by Mr. Hart—a descriptive list of the aculeate Hymenoptera of the State.
Reference should here be made, for the purpose of completing this summary of our services in the field of economic instruction, to the various addresses made within the State by Mr. Marten and myself.
DISTRIBUTION OF MATERIAL.
In pursuance of the plan mentioned in my last biennial report, 14,000 insects were distributed during the winter of 1890-91 to thirty-nine public schools. These sets were named, labeled, and systematically arranged, and were accompanied by printed pamphlets giving the in- formation necessary to make them available for use in the work of the schools. Notwithstanding this heavy draft on our duplicate material, our entomological col- lections are already larger than before the distribution was made.
The fact that the insects belonging to the State Labo- ratory of Natural History are now kept in the University building, and are held at the service of students, under suitable conditions, makes unnecessary any further col- lections, at present, under the law requiring a cabinet of insects to be prepared by the State Entomologist and deposited at the University.
No collections have been sent during the past two vears to the State educational institutions or to the State museum, but according to a resolution passed by the State Board of World’s Fair Commissioners last spring, it is held that the collections now being made by the Laboratory for Exposition purposes, will be availa- ble at the close of the Exposition for distribution by the Laboratory to these institutions.
S. A. ForBEs, September 13, 1892. Director.
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ILLINOIS STATE LABORATORY
OF
NATURAL HISTORY
URBANA, ILL,
BIENNIAL REPORT
OF THE
STATE LABORATORY
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SPECIAL REPORT
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UNIVERSITY BIOLOGIGAL EXPERIMENT STATION.
1895-1896.
SPRINGFIELD, ILL.: ILLIPS Bros., STATE SINTERS.
APS ROS., STA TE 1896.
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ILLINOIS STATE LABORATORY
NATURAL HISTORY
URBANA, ILL,
BIENNIAL REPORT
OF THE
STATE LABORATORY
AND
SPECIAL REPORT
OF THE
UNIVERSITY BIOLOGIGAL EXPERIMENT STATION.
1895-1896.
State Laboratory of Natural History.
LABORATORY STAFF.
Proresson STEPHEN ALFRED FORBES, Ph. D., Director of Laboratory and State Entomologist.
FRANK SMITH, A. M., Assistant Zodlogist.
CHARLES ATWOOD KOFOID, Ph. D., Superintendent of Bio- logical Station.
CHARLES ARTHUR HART, Systematic Entomologist and Cura-
tor of Collections. WILLIS GRANT JOHNSON, A. M., Assistant Entomologist.* WILLIAM APPLETON SNOW, M.S., Assistant Entomologist. ADOLPH HEMPEL, B. S., Zodlogical Assistant. BENJAMIN MINGE DUGGAR, A. M., Botanical Assistant.** CHARLES CHRISTOPHER ADAMS, B. S., Entomological As- sistant.tT HENRY CLINTON FORBES, Librarian and Business Agent. LYDIA MOORE HART, Artist. MARY JANE SNYDER, Secretary.
*Resigned June 30, 1896.
+From July 1 to November 20, 1896. tTo September 1, 1896.
*FAWrom July 1, 1895, to May 31, 1896. +tSince November 3, 1896.
BIENNIAL REPORT
OF THE
ILLINOIS STATE LABORATORY
NATURAL HISTORY
To the Lrustees of the University of Illinois.
GENTLEMEN: The operations of the State Laboratory of Natural History during the past two years have been carried successfully forward along the customary lines of investigation, with a notable expansion, under the stimulus of appropriations made by the last legislature, in the study of the contagious diseases of insects and in the work of the Illinois River Biological Experiment Station.
The insect-disease work took during the summer of 1895 the direction of an investigation of the causes of our general failure in field experiments with white museardine of the chinech-bug, together with an investigation of a newly discovered disease of the common squash-bug. Among additional subjects studied, was a destructive disease of grasshoppers in the West, material for which was obtained from a correspondent in Colorado, and the so-called white plague of the common cabbage worm.
The general result of our studies of the white muscardine has been to dis- eredit still further the practical utility of that disease for field operations on a large scale. In consequence of this outeome very few distributions of in- fected material have been made from my office during 1896, and those only in response to direct requests from farmers. The material sent out has been accompanied, as in all my previous sendings, with explicit warning to the effect that no definite reliance was to be placed on it, but that its use was to be regarded as an experiment only. It now seems quite clear, as the general result of all our investigations of this complicated subject, that the cireum- stances under which artificial field infection of chinch-bugs with the white- museardine fungus will take practical effect in a way to produce any important benefit are at least so rare and unusual that the whole subject must at present be assigned to the limbo of unverified theories.
A more promising result was obtained from an investigation of a bacterial disease of the common squash-bug, which proved to be highly contagious and
4
promptly fatal under laboratory conditions closely similar to those obtaining in the field. A Maboratory study of this disease, and of the organism charac- terizing it, was completed by my assistant in this department, Mr. B. M. Duggar, and his paper on the subject is now going through the press.
During the present season particular attention has been given to a new dis- ease of the army worm, which had the effect to destroy the greater part of the individuals composing an outbreak of this species early in the present year; and to a critical study of occurrences connected with a general disap- pearance of the chinch-bug, or the marked diminution of its numbers, in regions where it was abundant last year, and where it made a threatening beginning this spring. Careful and systematic studies have been made to determine, so far as practicable, the precise causes of this diminution in num- bers in the field, and particularly to ascertain whether contagious diseases, bacterial or other, not hitherto detected, were now discoverable. The results have been thus far either negative or.incomplete, the death of chinch-bugs being due, so far as observed and determined, either to the direct effect of the weather of the season or to one or both of the two contagious diseases of that insect thus far known tous. Some of our experiments are, however, still incomplete, and certain clues in my possession, when followed out, may possibly lead to other conclusions.
The work of the Biological Experiment Station has made very satisfaetory progress under somewhat embarrassing conditions, due especially to insufii- ciency of funds for the continuous maintenance of our work on the scale originally planned. The equipment fund has all been expended in the build- ing and furnishing of a laboratory boat as a field headquarters and students’ laboratory, in the purchase of a launch and in the substitution of more powerful machinery for that originally furnished with it, and in the purchase or manufacture of various pieces of apparatus required for our peculiar work.
Owing to the practical exhaustion of funds, the laboratory boat, established for the summer on Quiver Lake, was brought down to Havana September 1, 1896, and placed, together with the launch, in charge of our general Station assistant, Mr. Newberry, who takes the responsibility of the care and protec- tion of all our Station property during the fall and winter at a salary of $20 a month. The work of the Station is not, however, completely suspended, the Superintendent, Dr. Kofoid, visiting Havana once a fortnight for the - usual systematic round of observations, collections, and other operations, at the various substations in our field.
The Station bills are all paid except a few recently received, in process of payment now, and there is a comfortable balance in the appropriations for the current year beyond those covered by expenditures to which we are com- mitted. In accordance with your authorization at your last meeting | have discontinued Mr. Adolph Hempel’s services, simply because it was impossible to continue his salary with our funds, and have engaged Dr. Kofoid as Sta- tion Superintendent at his former salary, to June 30, 1897.
Full particulars concerning the scope of our operations, the amount and character of the work done, the results now ready for report, the papers
2)
completed, and those published or in press, I ask leave to file as a special supplementary report, for general circulation. I should be glad to have your order for a separate print of a thousand copies of this report, with illustra- tions, to be separately bound in pamphlet form at the expense of the State Laboratory of Natural History. I will only say now, in general, that the conelusions already reached, especially in Dr. Kofoid’s department of so- called plankton work, cannot fail to command the close attention and strong interest of scientific men, the world over, engaged in investigations of this class.
The summer opening of the Station to investigating and other independent students resulted in the acceptance of our invitation by twenty-two persons, five of whom were finally prevented from attending. Our accommodations were limited to fifteen workers additional to the Station force, but as the seventeen who arrived did not all present themselves at once, we were able to provide satisfactorily for them. These seventeen visitants represented the states of Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska. and Utah. Eight were members of college or university faculties; five were teachers of biology in high schools or academies; two were city school superintendents; and two were college students in advanced courses. The colleges and universities represented by them were the Wesleyan University, at Bloomington, IIl.; the Nebraska Wesleyan University; Carthage College, at Carthage, IIl.; Knox College, at Galesburg; Lincoln University, at Lincoln; Eureka College, at Eureka; Cornell College, at Mt. Vernon, Ia.; Drake University, at Des Moines, Ia.; the University of Utah, Salt Lake City; and the University of Illinois. The high schools and academies sending instructors to the Station were University School, Cleveland, O.; Detroit High School, Detroit, Mich.; the Public High School at Dwight, Ill., and the high schools at Havana, Il., and Marshalltown, Ia.
They were a competent and energetic group of students; a credit to the Station, and {in some respects an aid rather than a hindrance to ‘our work. Two of them, Professor Kelly, of Cornell College, lowa, and Mr. Beardslee, of University School, Cleveland, Ohio, are preparing papers presenting the scientific results of their Station investigations, which they have kindly placed at my disposal for publication in the State Laboratory Bulletin as a part of the series of papers growing out of the Station work. Our summer visitants were, I think without exception, pronounced in their appreciation of the opportunity offered them, and emphatic in their expressions of surprise at the attractiveness of the situation and the richness of the biological field in which the Station is established. Several of them have already filed re- quests for admission next year.
The success of the ‘‘ Summer |Opening,”’ together with several conversa- tions which I have had with teachers of biology, public school superintend- ents, and the like, have convinced me that it is incumbent upon us, if in any way practicable, to extend this offering of an opportunity for midsummer work to public school teachers of biology, and I have taken some preliminary
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steps to that end. As this is purely instructional work, however, it does not fall within the province of the State Laboratory of Natural History, but be- longs to the University relationship, and need not be discussed in this report.
The general entomological work of the State Laboratory has been mainly economic in purpose, and as it will be reperted by me to the Governor, I do not include it here.
Respectfully submitted, S. A. FORBES,
Director of Laboratory.
-1
SPECIAL REPORT
OF THE
BIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT STATION.
To the Trustees of the University of Illinois.
GENTLEMEN: The Biological Experiment Station of the University of Ill- nois was founded mainly to represent the University and the State in an im- portant field of Scientific investigation; to do its part towards making the people of the state at large acquainted with the State itself, to stimulate and to aid the educational activities of the public schools in respeet to the biolog- ical subjects and te reform, in some respects, their methods; and to put a foundation of precise and comprehensive knowledge of the system of aquatic life under the practical art of the fish-culturist,. especially as this is repre- sented by the operations of the Fish Commissions of our interior states.
It hardly need be said that an educational institution may not properly as- sume and keep the name of university which is content to depend wholly on the abilities and activities of others for the store of knowledge which it dis- tributes to its students, contributing nothing on its own part to the common stock. Such a condition of complete dependence marks it as at best a second- ary school. It is also beneath the dignity of a sovereign state to depend wholly on others for the fundamental elements of its welfare, making no effort to render any return in kind. On the other hand, a state university owes its first duty to the people of its own state, and should investigate by preference subjects which concern their welfare. Even though it may do valuable work in remoter fields, it neglects its own sphere of essential and immediate useful- ness if it lets its own territory remain unexplored, and its own special prob- lems le without solution.
The teaching of biology has been for many years required in the publie schools of Illinois, but it isa commonplace complaint that this work is far less valuable than it should be, and that its progress is grievously hampered be- cause most of our teachers of science have a very imperfect acquaintance with the subject-matter which should be taught and with the most fruitful methods of biological instruction. The University of Illinois, through its
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Biological Station, ean do a great service to education at this juncture by opening up our local natural history to teachers of elementary biology, and by making them acquainted in a thoroughly practical way with the most use- ful special methods in this field. We seem just now, indeed, in admirable po- sition to lead the way along a new line of progress by helping to bring teacher and pupil, under favorable conditions, into the presence of living nature ont of doors, adding to the methods of the class room and the laboratory of biology those of observation, study, and instruction in the field.*
The art of the fish-culturist is to our waters what the art of agriculture is to our tillable lands. Each was in the beginning purely empirical, resting on a small store of common knowledge gained by the crude experience of the un- educated and the untrained. Agriculture has now been largely placed on a scientific foundation, and vigorous efforts are making all-over the eivilized world to extend, to deepen, and to render more exact in every direction our acquaintance with the sciences which underlie the practice of this oldest of - the arts. The development of fish-culture has, however, lingered far behind that of its companion subject, compared with which it is indeed still in the stage of barbarism. We treat the product of our natural waters with a degree of intelligenee and skill scarcely above that which the Indian exhibited in his rude attempts at agriculture before the time of Columbus. Our Biological Station was founded in part with the hope of helping to do for fish-eulture what our forty or more agricultural experiment stations are now doing for the agriculture of the United States.
To accomplish these various ends, it was necessary that a subject should be chosen and that a location should be found offering a suitable field for scien- tific research of a kind to reward the skilled investigation with results of scien- tific value, and that these results should also interest a larger public than that which is prepared to appreciate and to utilize purely technical work. It was essential that this location should be readily accessible from the University, and that it should be attractive, comfortable, and convenient as a center of operations for visiting investigators and for general and elementary students of our field biology. The purposed relation to fish-culture of course required that it should be on or near some lake or stream, or, better still, on some sys- tem of waters including both lakes and streams in large variety and in elose proximity. After a careful study of the University environment, I selected in 1894 the Illinois River and its dependent waters as our general field, and the vicinity of Havana, in Mason county, as the principal seat of our opera- tions.. Our two years’ experience here has served only to confirm our first impression, that a very suitable and, indeed, highly fortunate selection had been made.
* A genuine fieéld-work summer school would be as far ahead of laboratory work for teachers—the class who are wrestling with nature study in the grades—as the laboratory is ahead of the old-fashioned text book. It would be a distinct advance upon anything ever at- tempted, so far as know, in this country —WILBUR S.' JAckMAN. .
tlhe fe
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LOCATION AND FIELD OF OPERATIONS.
The Illinois River near Havana has a maximum width of about five hundred feet at the lowest stage of water, and a maximum depth at that stage of ap- proximately ten feet. Fora distance of about five miles, at the town and above and below, it runs along the foot of a steep sandy bank or bluff, rang- ing from forty to eighty feet in height, itself the edge of an extensive deposit of glacial sand extending with little interruption some seventy miles along the eastern side of the river, and perhaps a dozen or fifteen miles in width from east to west. The bottom of this bed of sand is not anywhere exposed near Havana and has not been reached, so far as I have learned, by any bor- ings in that vicinity. From the foot of the bluff, at or near the water’s edge, is a more or less general oozing of clear cold water sometimes flowing forth in springs of considerable size and sometimes forming small marshy tracts be- tween the river and the bluff.
The opposite or western bank of the river here is of black earth, the border of an alluvial bottom three or four miles wide, in which are several ponds and lakes and through which Spoon River winds its way, entering the IIli- nois nearly opposite the town. At the upper end of this five mile stretch the river leaves the sandy bluff, having thence alluvial banks for some distance northward. The remnant of an old river bed continues upward, however, from this point along the bluff in the form of a narrow bay one and a half miles in length, the so-called Quiver Lake, open to the river below, and re- ceiving Quiver Creek at its upper end. This creek, largely formed by the drainage of a sandy tract to the east and north, empties into the broad and shallow head of the lake through a muddy and weedy flat. Quiver Lake, like the river below, has a sandy bank and margin on the east, and a mud bank on the west. The natural drainage of the sand escapes in large quantities along the eastern side of this lake, keeping the shore constantly saturated with cold water, to a greater or less width according to the level of the lake, and modifying greatly, when the river is low, the character of the waters of the lake itself. A broad bay of this Quiver Lake extending to the west from near its middle, forms what is known as Dogfish Lake, with shores of black alluvial earth all around.
The other waters of the vicinity included in the system of Station opera- tions are Thompson’s Lake, a shallow body of water about five miles long by one mile wide, lying in the bottoms near the western bluff; Flag Lake, a shallow muddy pond or, more correctly, a marsh, about three miles in length, largely overgrown in summer with the club-rush, water-lily, and arrowleaf; and Phelps Lake, a small pond of dead water, three fourths of a mile in length, with almost no vegetation, in the midst of a densely wooded bottom-
land.
The field headquarters of the Station party, the summer location of the laboratory boat, was at the foot of Quiver Lake, against the sandy eastern bank. The top of the bluff is here wooded at the edge and for a variable dis- tanee back with oak and hickory and ash and other’ common hard-wood upland trees. Cottonwoods, walnuts, locusts, coffee-trees, elms, and pecans of
10
a considerable size, extending in a rather ragged line, offer a very welcome shade at the foot of the bluff at about high-water mark. An abundant sup- ply of very pure and delightfuliy cool water is easily reached everywhere, either in running springs or by driving down an iron pipe for a few feet in the sand and screwing on a common cistern pump.
The occasional narrow, swampy flats along the eastern bank of Quiver Lake and beside the river between that lake and the town, are usually tangled thickets of underbrush and swamp-land trees, which at certain sea- sons of the year are gay with multitudes of flowers and vocal with the songs of a great variety of birds. The general aspect of the flora of the sandy bluffs is quite unusual for Illinois, many plants occurring there abundantly which are rarely seen in ordinary situations. The bottom-lands become cov- ered in late summer and autumn with an immense growth of composite plants, setting the intervals and recesses of the forest ablaze with yellows, ‘purples, and reds, and loading the air with the heavy odor of the upland ‘Eupatorium.
This forest itself, beginning at the water’s edge with a billowy belt of ‘pale green willows, is an untamed tract of primitive wilderness, differ- ing from that through which the Indian hunted his prey only by the ‘absence of the small percentage of its growth which had a commercial value. Subject to periodical overfiow, it has not even been fenced. Elms and pecans and sycamores tower overhead or slowly moulder where ‘they fall, and vines and creepers clamber over the underbrush in a growth like that of a semi-tropical jungle. The shallow lakes and swamps are glori- ous in their season with the American lotus and the white water-lily, the former sometimes growing in tracts of a hundred acres or more, over which its gigantic peltate leaves, borne on tall slender stems, flash in the sun as ‘they bend to the summer wind. In July and August many of the lakes are nearly filled with submerged vegetation, and in the latter part of the season a film of the dueckweeds forms along the shore and floats in large patches down the sluggish current of the stream. Water-fowl abound at the period of ‘their migrations, and fish lie on the shallows, basking in the summer sun in numbers such that dozens may be seen at a time as one floats along in a ‘boat.
The microscopic life of the water is equally varied and abundant, a meas- urement of the quantity present in a cubie meter of water showing that with a single reported exception* it is at certain times far in excess of the amount recorded for any other situation in the world. The variety of species present is equally remarkable. The list of those oceurring in a single eubic meter of water from the river at Havana in the month of July contains about twice as many as any of the lists of those found at the same time in the lakes of northern Germany or in our own Great Lakes.
The bluff beyond the bottoms to the west is higher than that on the east. and usually of a very different character. Strata of carboniferous rock, sometimes containing veins of coal, outerop locally near their base, while the
* Dobersdorfer See, Holstein.
1]
higher slopes are formed of yellowish clays, ditched and gullied by the rain, with oceasional small streams flowing through gorge-like valleys from the level uplands of the country farther west.
The description thus far given applies to the lower stages of water only. When the river is at flood the entire bottom-land from bluff to bluff is often wholly under water, lakes, streams and marshes being then confounded in one unbroken sheet from three to five or six miles across. As the river level varies some eighteen feet between high and low water mark, it may reach in its deepest part a depth of nearly thirty feet. These periods of inundation are very commonly two in a year, one beginning: in late winter or spring with the melting of the snows, and the other coming most frequently in June or July, as a consequence of the early summer rains. The rise at either or both these periods is oceasionally so small that no very marked effect on the biology of the river is produced. It was, in fact, fortunate for our operations that the first two years of our occupancy of the Station were marked by this compara- tive uniformity in the river level. Observations and collections made at this time have given us a fairly steady biological base line, by comparison with which variations in other years may be detected, due to extensive overflow and subsequent recession of the waters.
The plan and purpose of our work was such as to make it necessary that we should choose a number of regular stations—ealled substations in our re- ports—at which collections should be made and observations placed on record at regular periods for the entire year, and one year after another. These sub- stations, thirteen in number, were chosen to represent the greatest variety of biological situations which the territory within our reach would permit. They have been sufficiently characterized in the introductory part to a report by the Station Entomologist, Mr. C. A. Hart, on the entomology of the Illinois River and adjacent waters, published in the Bulletin of the State Laboratory of Natural History in 1895. It may be said in general that the substations chosen represent the springy bank and sandy margin of Quiver Lake and of the river itself in both swift and sluggish water, the opposite mud bank of river and lake, shallow mud flats overgrown with water weeds, the bed of river and lake in the deepest water occurring, and three forms of bottom-land lakes, together with a fourth oceasionally visited. Thompson's Lake gives us a permanent body of water of some little depth, always opening into the river, evenat its lowest stage, but contrasting with Quiver Lake in the fact that this opening is long and tortuous, while in the latter it is half as broad as the lake itself. Matanzas Lake, on the eastern side of the river but below the town, is substantially intermediate in character between these two. Like Quiver Lake, it has a high, wooded, sandy eastern shore and low forest-covered mud banks on the west, with an inlet at the head, which is, however, smaller than Quiver Creek. The flow of spring water from the sand is much more abundant. Like Thompson’s Lake, its outlet is narrow, but it is very short. This lake commonly has more vegetation than Thompson’s and less than Quiver Lake. In Flag Lake we have little more than a fairly permanent swamp, subject, indeed, in extraordinary years to be dried out completely,
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but overflowed again from the river at every slight rise. Phelps Lake, on the other hand, serves as an example of the highly variable conditions pre- vailing ina pool filled up at every general overflow, but isolated on the re- treat of the waters, and drying out entirely in the very driest years.
ESSENTIAL OBJECTS.
It is the general, comprehensive object of our Biological Station to study the forms of life, both animal and vegetable, in all of their stages, of a great river system, as represented in carefully selected typical localities. This study must include their distinguishing characters; their classification and variations; their local and general distribation and abundance; their be- havior; characteristics, and life histories; their mutual] relationships and inter- actions as living associates; and the interactions likewise between them and the inanimate forms of matter and of energy in the midst of which they live. We are, in short, to do what is possible to us to unravel and to elueidate in general and in detail the system of aquatic life in a considerable district of interior North America.
So vast a subject must of course be intelligently divided and studied part by part, in some systematic order, to avoid a dissipation of effort and to in- sure the speedy attainment of some definite and tangible results. Its mest obvious divisions are the systematic, the biographical, and the cecological: and this is the order, broadly speaking, in which the general investigation must be carried on. Both systematie 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 ecological idea whieh is to lead in the organization and development of our work. <A systematic sur- vey of the biological assemblage is a necessary preliminary step and the tracing of life histories and the recognition and deseription of immature stages is a searcely less essential prerequisite; for without the knowledge which these studies are to give us, it would be obviously impossible to make any comprehensive study of variations, distribution, and ecological relation- ships.
The ecology of the Ilimois 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 suecess 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, whieh, being worked ‘out one by one, maybe later brought together as contributions to a
solution of the larger problems involved. While it is true, for example, that nothing in or about the waters studied which in any notable way affects any of the great groups of the system can be wholly a matter of indiffer- ence to the scientific student of fish-culture, the interests of everv species being more or less intimately bound up with the interests of every other, yet provisional conclusions, at least, with regard to this, that, or the other kind of fish, or with regard to fishes at large, may be reached which will have con- siderable practical value, long before the entire system of interactions and relationships is fully understood. It is not necessary that we should know the food of every species of fish in the locality before we can generalize profitably the food relations of any one, although inference from such pro- visional generalizations must always be held subject to modification as our knowledge of related matters grows. <A similar remark may be made with respect to such purely seientifie matters as the limits and causes of variation, a very useful knowledge of which may be acquired without a full and final theory of variation in general.
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 loeal distribution and abundance.
GENERAL METHODS.
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 ‘‘synthetie type,’’ all of whose best qualities should be not only preserved but intensi- fied among his variously differentiated progeny. If I may generalize my own experience, I must say that it is extraordinarily difficult at the present time to find for this work the trained and intelligent naturalist, habituated to the methods of the close observer, whose eye nothing escapes, but whose mind rapidly and skilfully sifts the miscellaneous offerings of his senses, holding the significant and suggestive, and letting slip the trivial and the unessential. There seem to be among our younger college men ten practical embryologists to one good observer. It is, in fact, the biological station, wisely and liberally managed, which is to restore to us what was best in the naturalist of the old school united to what is best in the laboratory student of the new.
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On the other hand, the variety of uses which must now be made of pre- served material in the course of our Station studies necessitates the frequent ‘employment of the nicest methods of the histological laboratory, and a com- plete acquaintance, at least, with laboratory methods in general.
Definite and precise comparisons of different aquatic loealities with respect to their biology have first been made possible in some considerable measure by the comparatively recent introduction of more or less exact quantitative methods for the collection and determination of the biological contents of the water. These, commonly known as plankton methods, enable us also to study the biological history of any locality to which they are fully applicable, by making it possible to bring into close comparison the organie contents of the water from day to day, from season to season, and from year to year. Unfortunately, these methods are not as yet capable of application to all aquatic forms in all situations, but have been used successfully only for the smaller plant and animal forms of the clear open water.
By using always identical apparatus in a perfectly uniform manner for the accumulation of microscopic and semi-microscopie objects in such waters and preserving the product by identical methods, it is possible to make and keep collections which may serve as a means to a precise comparison of the mass of organic life in the waters studied, or of the number of individuals representing any selected species.
In our own Station work these plankton operations have been carried forward from the beginning at all the substations where open water could be found in condition to permit the hauling of our plankton net, or, later, the _use of the plankton pump. A large number of quantitative determinations of collections so made have been worked out in a way to give the actual quantity of organie life in a cubic meter of water for each situation studied by this method, and enumerations of various forms have likewise been made under the microscope by methods such as to give us reliable data for a com- parison of the various waters with reference to the number of such forms in a cubic meter of water. Approximately quantitative collections have like- wise been made, wherever possible, in situations which do not permit the use of this plankton apparatus, but with results far less reliable, of course, because based mainly on personal estimates, and made by the use of less precise and exhaustive methods.
It seems not impossible that quantitative and numerical plankton work will be found to have a certain value as a ground of inference concerning the biological contents of water which cannot be searched by the plankton appa- ratus. In other words, definite, if general, relationships may be found to exist between the amount and composition of the plankton in the free and open water of a given lake or stream at any given time and the mass and variety of living forms contained in the marginal shallows or imbedded in the mud of the bottom. -
Considerable modifications have been made at the Station since it opened, in the details of the quantitative method, often forced upon us by the peeu- liarities of the location and the special conditions under which our work was
15
earried on, and interesting improvements in special apparatus have re- sulted from the effort to overcome our peculiar difficulties. A paper on our plankton methods and apparatus is now in course of preparation by the Superintendent of the Station, Dr. C. A. Kofoid, to whom this department of the work has been assigned. ; .
As our work progresses and special problems are taken up for separate and continuous investigation, the experimental method will necessarily come prominently into use. The object of biological experimentation is the inter- pretation of nature, and, like all intelligent experimental work, it must be suggested and guided by observation and hypothesis. With us it is the cecological field in which experiment is especially called for. Given certain phenomena of local distribution, of relative abundance, of association, of habit, of variation, and the like, whose causes it is desirable to ascertain, it is incumbent upon us, by a eritical and exhaustive study of the environ- ment to find the materials for rational hypotheses as to such causes, and to test such hypotheses by experimental procedure. It is thus always the field observation, or the laboratory observation made under econdi- tions which involve the least practicable departure from natural conditions actually existing, which must precede and suggest the experiment. The method and the general object of this work resemble thus more closely, on the whole, those of the agricultural experiment station—which is, indeed, a biological station under another name and devoted to a special end— than those of the laboratory of experimental physiology; and it is because ours is to be in the end and in its final objects a station for the solution, by experimental methods, of both special and general problems in the field of ceecology that it was christened by its official board of control the Biological Experiment Station of the University.
EQUIPMENT.
The main features of our present equipment are the laboratory boat and its contents, the steam launch, a number of skiffs, and the apparatus and belongings of the Illinois State Laboratory of Natural History and of the biological departments of the University of Illinois, both of which are placed, without restriction, at the service of the Station force.
THE FLOATING LABORATORY.
Our ultimate objects do not limit us to any single field, but will eventually compel us to transfer at least a part of our operations to other points for pur- poses of comparison and contrast. Indeed, the Illinois River work is but a eonvenient point of departure for an investigation of the whole Mississippi River system.. These facts have made necessary for us a movable construe- tion of considerable size, carefully designed and thoroughly equipped for our work. Furthermore, the great changes of water level and the enormous ex- pansion of the area covered at flood in the region over which we operate, would make a loeation on shore oftentimes extremely inconvenient as working quarters for our Station force. There is a great advantage also in a position
16
in the very mjdst of our field, where contact with the objects of our interest must be almost continuous. It seemed, consequently, clear that a house-boat or, so-called cabin boat of special construction, furnished as a biological laboratory, but with an equipment .for minor experiments also, would meet our needs far more precisely than a building on shore.
This laboratory boat, launched in April, 1896, was built at Havana: from plans drawn up under my direction by Messrs. Gunn and MeLane, of the architectural department of the University. A strong built hull of Wash- ington fir supports a deck 20x60 ft., upon which is a cabin 16x56 ft. In build- ing the hull extraordinary pains were taken to obtain a steady construction. A.three-inch solid bulk-head was run lengthwise through the middle. and two keelsons divide the space between this central bulkhead and the gunwales. Lateral strength was given by four series of diagonal braces, set as shown in Plate VI, and placed every two feet, and by three hog-chains run from the bottom of each gunwale over the middle bulk-head As a consequence, the floor of the boat proved to be remarkably steady, no tremor being noticeable in the use of the higher powers of the microscope on minute objects suspend- ed in fluids. The interior of the hull is ventilated by means of four hatech- ‘ways with movable covers, two at each end of the deck.
The cabin has six large windows on each side, made freely movable fer ventilation, and also transom ventilators above the windows. The roof is penetrated by four large ventilators and walls and roof are made double, as ‘a protection against the heat, by ceiling with Georgia pine. By virtue of these arrangements the laboratory rooms were remarkably comfortable during even the hottest weather of the year.
The interior of the cabin is divided into four rooms; an office and library at one end 11 feet and 6 inches by 16 feet, occupied by the Station staff; a main laboratory 29 by 16 feet, primarily for visiting students and for the experi- mental equipment; a kitchen 8 feet and 8 inches by 12 feet, with gasoline stove cand other cook’s equipment, in which mid-day meals can be prepared for the ‘Station force, and a small closet or store-room adjacent. The main laboratory is provided with tables, two to each window, and with shelving against the walls for books, note-boxes, specimens, ete., while down the center of the room is a sink table 3x22 feet, covered with zine and furnished with a water supply for numerous small aquaria. A long overhead zine-lined tank is sup- plied by iron piping, with a screw end outside the boat to which the discharge pipe of a hand foree-pump ean be readily attached. Stopeocks and glass and rubber tubing make the necessary connections with the tanks and jars used for aquarium work, the overflow being carried off by drainage pipes which empty outside the hull. The space beneath the central table is enclosed with doors and provided with shelves for general storage.
The boat has no motive power but is intended to be towed from place to place as'oeeasion requires. Our steam launch ‘‘Illini’’ proved, indeed, to haye sufficient power to transport this boat under ordinary circumstances.
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This launch, built by the Racine Boat. Manufacturing Company, of Racine, Wisconsin, is 25 feet long by 6 foot beam and is licensed to earry seventeen persons. The machinery furnished with it was replaced during the summer by a compound engine of four and a half horse power, with keel condenser. Both boiler and engine were designed by Assistant Professor VanDervoort of the University department of mechanical engineering and the engine and the speed propeller were made under his direction at the University shops. The launch was not designed especially for speed, the distances to be covered in our work being usually very short. It gives us, however, a rate of about six miles per hour. It is entirely safe in all weathers to which it may be ex- posed in our situation—a point of special importance to us since our regular routine of field work must be carried out without reference to storm or tem- perature. Four skiffs of various sizes and a portable canvass boat complete the aquatie equipment.
The more peculiar items of the field and laboratory apparatus are the plankton equipment, the breeding cages for the aquatic insects, and a specially constructed centrifugal machine for the rapid precipitation and condensation in graduated tubes of the product of quantitative collections. This last is a modification of the centrifuge used by physicians, the tubes and tube ear- riers being the same, but the mechanism being specially designed for us by Proressor VanDervoort and made under his supervision at the University shops. The plankton apparatus first used consisted of a peculiar conical net (Apstein pattern) made of No. 20 silk bolting cloth. This was hauled through the water obliquely from bottom to top, a distance of thirty metres, at a perfectly uniform rate, the movement being timed by seconds counted with watch in hand. The net was suspended to a carrier and drawn along a tightly stretched line, to which it was hung by means of pulleys, the various particulars of the arrangement being devised by Assistant Professor Smith, in charge of the plankton apparatus and the Station itself during the first year. In May, 1896, this plankton net was superseded by a hand force- pump, selected after considerable investigation of various styles, of a size and weight to be conveniently managed in a large skiff. The feed pipe of this pump is long enough to reach the bottom in our deepest water and the discharge pipe delivers into a straining net suspended in the water from a float to secure the contents of a vertical section. The further end of the feed pipe is sunk to the bottom and slowly raised to the surface, the pump being meanwhile worked by an assistant in a perfectly regular manner. Minor features of the apparatus and items of the procedure will be described in a special paper on our Station methods, now in course of preparation by the Station Superintendent.
For keeping insect larvee under perfectly natural conditions but exposed to continual observation small cubical boxes were used, with two sides and the bottom of wood and the other two sides of wire gauze, and a cover of glass set in a wooden frame which overhung the top “of the ease, fitting closely to the sides. These cases were placed around a large float in the lake or river in such a manner as to be kept about half full of water, which ofcourse had free access through the wire gauze sides.
_
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The laboratéry boat was amply stocked with compound and dissecting mi- croscopes and a supply of chemicals, glassware, and apparatus for the pres- ervation of specimens and for microscopical technology. It was equipped for fifteen workers in addition to the Station staff. The excellent working library of the State Laboratory of Natural History was freely drawn upon for everything needed in aid of the special work in progress at the time and the library appropriation of the Laboratory was also used as necessary to supply desiderata. This aquatic establishment was found in all respects so satisfac- tory and convenient, that rented rooms in the town, similarly furnished, were presently abandoned by the entire party, all preferring to work upon the boat.
ORGANIZATION AND STAFF.
The staff of the Biological Station is composed of the Director and certain Assistants of the State Laboratory of Natural History, all of whom are ap- pointed by the Trustees of the University of Illinois, and all except the Direct- or upon his nomination. This officer is responsible for the organization, equipment, and general and financial administration of the Station, for the plan and objects of its operations, for the establishment and assignment of de- partments, for the main features of the papers and reports, and for the editorial supervision of the Station publication. The Superintendent, who is appoint- ed as such officer, although borne upon the list of the assistants of the State Laboratory, has immediate charge of the Station force and is responsible to the Director for the execution of its plan of operations. He is allowed a large latitude with regard to details and in the absence of the Director all the workers at the Station are under his immediate orders.
From the establishment of the Station in April, 1894, until June 30, 1895, Mr. Frank Smith, at first Instructor and later Assistant Professor in the Uni- versity department of zodlogy, served as Superintendent, devoting his time continuously to Station work until January 1,.1895. He had special personal charge of the quantitative collections—the so-called plankton work—during this period. He also began during the summer of 1894 a sys tematic study of the oligochxte worms of the Station and its vicinity, which he has continued to the present time, giving to this subject his vacations entire, and such time as is left him after the performance of his duties in his University department. He was assisted in his work from May to September, 1894, inclusive, by Mrs. Dora Smith who served the Station as its microscopical technologist during that period. Beginning with July 1, 1895, the Station has been in charge of Dr. C. A. Kofoid as Superintendent with the planktology of the situation as his special department. He also acted as superintendent of construction during the building of the laboratory boat. His entire time has been given to the Station work, except for the teaching of one University class for one term, undertaken as an exchange of services with the zodlogical department.
The entomological work has been, since the commencement, in charge of Mr. C. A. Hart, Systematic Entomologist of the State Laboratory, assisted
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for two of the summer months of 1895 by Mr. Ernest B. Forbes. Mr. Hart’s share in the regular routine of Station operations has been the making of the inshore and longshore collections at the various substations. In addition to. his studies of the habits and life histories of aquatie insects, he has listed the Mollusca of the collections from the beginning. From September 8, 1894, to July 1, 1895, he was the sole continuous occupant of the Station, being responsible during that period for the regular field work, carried on with the assistance of visiting parties from the State Laboratory at Urbana.
Mr. Adolph Hempel was engaged without interruption upon a study of the Protozoa and Rotifera of the Station from its opening to June 1, 1896. At this time the condition of his eyes forbade further use of the microscope and he was placed in charge of the Station launch as its licensed engineer. He occupied the Station alone during the winter of 1895-96, keeping up, with such assistance as it was necessary to engage from time to time, the regular routine of collections and observations at the various substations.
Miss Lydia M. Hart, Artist of the State Laboratory, has devoted a large part of her time to drawings in illustration of the various papers prepared by the Station foree. She was at Havana during about a month of 1895, the remainder of her work in this direction having been done at the State Labora- tory.
_ Mr. Ernest B. Forbes has served during the vacation period of three seasons,
the first as a general zoélogical assistant, the second as an assistant in the entomological field work, and the third in making a special study of the Cyclopidx of the Station collection.
Periodical chemical analyses of various waters collected at the Station have been made, from the first opening, under the direction of Professor A. W. Palmer, of the chemical department of the University of Illinois. Mr. C. F. Hottes, Botanical Assistant in the University, made several trips to the Station with Superintendent Smith during his regular visits in the winter of 1894-95. and both he and Professor T. J. Burrill, of the University department of botany, have made occasional collections of aquatic plants.
Mr. Miles Newberry, an experienced fisherman of Havana, has served the Station very efficiently from the beginning as a general assistant. He has been particularly serviceable as an aid in plankton work and has had imme- diate charge of the boat and of the aquatic equipment generally.
GENERAL EXHIBIT OF RESULTS.
Although the first report of results accomplished in a field so extensive and complicated as that occupied by our Biological Station must necessarily be largely an exhibit of work in progress, it seems possible to make a statement which shall give a comprehensive, if somewhat indefinite, idea of the outcome of operations thus far undertaken. This report may be made most conven- iently under the heads of plankton operations, collections accumulated ento-
20
mological studies, molluscan collections and determinations, fresh-water worms, studies of Protozoa and Rotifera, chemical determinations, reports and publications, and the summer opening of the Station.
PLANKTON OPERATIONS.
The minute plant and aninial life suspended in the waters of a river system, moving downwards with its current and washed to and fro by its waves, com- poses what is known to the modern biologist as the plankton of its waters. The Station operations in this field were primarily directed to a study of the amount of this plankton in the various locations selected, its seasonal and other periodic changes, its local and vertical distribution, its composition as to the species represented, and its relation in the general system of aquatic life. Our field of operations is a unique one, as yet practically untouched by the scientific investigator, in so far as it is limited to a river system and its de- pendent waters. |
The plankton substations in 1894 and 1895 were five in number, one in the river, a short distance above the foot of Quiver Lake, another in Quiver Lake itself, a third in Dogfish Lake, a fourth in Thompson’s Lake, and a fifth in Flag Lake, between Thompson’s Lake and the river. To these were added in 1896 a substation at Phelps Lake, from which, indeed, a single quantitative collection had been made in 1894, and another in Spoon River a short dis- tance above its mouth. From these various substations a thousand quantita- tive collections have been made since the Station opened, those from April, 1894, to June 30, 1895, by Professor Frank Smith or under his immediate direction and those subsequent to that time by Dr. C. A. Kofoid. All these tows have of course been carefully preserved by methods such as to permit their quantitative comparison and about three fourths of them have been quantitatively determined by Dr. Kofoid by methods of precise measure- ment. A considerable beginning has also been made in the enumeration of their contents by counting under the microscope.
Various modifications of plankton methods, elaborate tests of the apparatus used and of the methods of discussion current, and other items of improve- ment in the equipment and in the methods of planktology will be reported by Dr. Kofoid in a paper on this department of our work now nearly ready for the press. For certain general conclusions of considerable interest and of at least provisional value reference may be made to the same paper.
COLLECTIONS ACCUMULATED.
The total number of lots of specimens collected since the opening of the Station amounts to 6,628, besides 5,500 pinned insects. Of the former, 434 lots contain materials for a study of the food of animals, 300 of them being the eontents of the stomachs of fishes; 270 are specimens of vertebrates; 3,560 are preserved collections of invertebrate animals; 1,823 are towing-net collections; and 543 were collections of Rotifera and Protozoa, most of whieh were studied alive because incapable of satisfactory preservation. The entire
number of collections, including under this head each objeet or lot of objects specially numbered and separately entered on our notes or in the accessions’ catalogue of the Station, isithus nearly 12,000. Besides these mention should be made of about 400 microscopical slides of serial sections of oligochzte worms made for Professor Smith in the course of his studies of that group.
LIST OF COLLECTIONS.
Mhallow=maremcolecuionsS with. DIT SE) Wb. 4: <'ee cele. ofic wideiciel he cielnie ele cvivia siete ols tdeicjele cwcteese 232 @ualitaince collections with surface Net oc. le co alos ec cee ccecce ane tects scasccdecoess 592 Quantitatine collections with plankton apparatus)... cc. .icc.ccene ceeds asics nccciacncocee 999 PVOLOZO MNCs COULLET Sp COLLECTIONS cc cs cnite nied cies clnie ite cic cee oneitelscieeleies cc beceeeutine | 543 METTLE SEGOULECULOUISh i ccincs siete levers emesis ojaye a/ayel ste aleveve/s erate atate cree otateitis erSicreereleverelvinis sea sieieiiale ees 490 MUPTRE STATES HUPRUA CLE CLL OIN Soe, cccceie vi cieseiesatel ere are aicla serosal ebele cele Gia lots ve/a a a ibiete Btejs pistaye ra amie ste ale Biepepere inletons } 167 PANO ENILICL UCC LLE CULOMLSE cice c crasccte eee eae eee a ee tao oP erotic Weleu cord aulenaials sgbiaettecentes 235 PEE CUHAL CULTOR COL OC ULONS)) sass scrociets nioeycitera/uclors eter ah ious Ae iavetets wielaxese aiatetare eeleie) ine 0a rai metoveretone 2,245 Nets CIM MEC SPE CIIN CD'S) srarays.cistevstoree are ores late wrotefersl sac ere. aiSioyhere eine amd opr RNd ale) nea ahaa ore | 5, 500 UCPC CECE L OC ULOMG Mcrae eatarrerara coteversistatchciierevors, chev ctalotehee cts tals oyapac nolan stersttalctate oe stale eeerneis eres 388 LU ELCrMITS oies eIe OPice sc icTevateies disteys | felite aNs Glote ablatorse nistoucieke othe Slate choles MARR ates «GIB oe. aelBicteddate 196 PENRENTS MN EPCRA core eee tai cel Staion eiceret dey bleveca/a DehiNe fo ete oleh tials 20 erstavo ale on eegbnie mbajen’s ees slaeie hovolala | 59 ENG AUER ae ye T Rs Lise ce tok Reh. ciate ahtia ghaaldhsie ssssidalethigles abies aeiakbaadaeindonie-« Adee aietaralere 15 IPove Gl CCWIACTI@IAR 55 A BCA BSOR SE SOP R aU a uEiob cette Hadod al Abcnee ct iat faite nator GHEOncrr canace 434
ENTOMOLOGICAL STUDIES.
It has been thus far the primary object of the entomological studies made by Mr. Hart to make us fully acquainted with each species in all its stages as a preliminary to investigations along other lines. To this end extensive search has been made of all varieties of situation in the waters of the Station field, the species at each location being listed at each visit and collections being also made. The regular typical localities represented by the substa- tions have been further searched at regular intervals for two years. About five hundred lists and illustrative collections have thus been accumulated. The biological observations and breeding-cage experiments made during this. time are recorded on some seven hundred note slips.
The Hymenoptera and a large part of the Diptera and Lepidoptera have been workea up, and reported upon in a paper on the entomology of the Ilh- nois River and adjacent waters, published as Article VI. of Volume IV. of the Bulletin of the State Laboratory of Natural History. Since this publication much additional information concerning these groups has been acquired. Careful studies have been made on some of the smaller Diptera, on the water-beetles, and upon the Neuroptera, Thysanura, and Hydrachnide. The dragon-fly collections have been determined by Mr. J. C. Needham, formerly Instructor at Knox College, and by Mr. C..C. Adams, an assistant in the State Laboratory.
These entomological collections represent some 350 species of insects. Every effort has been made to identify, by breeding, eggs, larve, and pup of insects aquatic in any stage. About 275 hitherto undescribed forms have thus been obtained and immature stages of about 225 species have been accurately identified.
t2
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, MOLLUSCAN COLLECTIONS AND DETERMINATIONS.
The Station collections of mollusks, made mostly by Mr. Hart, con- tain about 11,000 specimens, 600 of which are clams (Unionid#). All this material except that most recently brought in has been examined and deter- mined by various American specialists. About eighty-five names of aquatic or semi-aquatie mollusks have thus been obtained and their distribution and life history have received special attention. The Unionid# have been studied with reference to characters derived from the entire animal and much inter- esting information has been accumulated concerning their relationships, life histories, and parasites.
FRESH WATER WORMS.
The greater part of the time of Professor Smith available for State Labora- tory work has been devoted to a study of the oligochete worms (earthworms and their allies) found in and about the Illinois River and other waters near Havana. Most of this work has necessarily heen of a systematic character, although progress has been made along other lines. The importance of sys- tematic work on this order is shown by the fact that with the exception of de- scriptions of two species published in Vol. III of the Bulletin of the State Laboratory,* almost nothing has been known of the representatives of the group in the Mississippi Valley and but little, indeed, for all the eastern part of the United States.
Collections have been made from all the regular substations and at various places in the bottom-lands and along the shores of the river to a point two miles south of Havana. Many of the worms obtained were studied while liv- ing, and for further study about seventy bottles of specimens have been pre- pared and preserved in aleohol or formaline. For a successful study of most of these worms serial sections are indispensable and thus far about four hundred microscopical slides of such sections have been made and used.
The work of identification is now nearly completed and probably nearly all of the different species occurring in the region are represented on our lists. Of the thirteen families of Oligochxta recognized by Beddard, nine are repre- sented at Havana by thirty species belonging to sixteen genera. Less than one half of these species occur in Europe and the remainder, with few exeep- tions, are known only from the United States. Two new genera and at least seven new species have thus far been found by us.
Numerous experiments have been made in rearing naidiform worms and considerable new information has thus been acquired concerning their asex- ual reproduction.
Identification and deseription of the planarian worms of the Station collec- tions has been kindly undertaken for us by Professor W. M. Woodworth, of
Art. IV. “‘On the Anatomy and ee re of a New Earthworm (Diplocardia communis), gen. et sp. noy., by ue Garman; and Art. \ “On an American Earthworm of the Family Phreoryctide,” by S. A. Forbes.
23 Harvard University, to whom all our material has been sent, much of it alive. The work on these collections has all been done and Professor Woodworth’s paper is nearly ready for publication.
STUDIES OF PROTOZOA AND ROTIFERA.
These minute animal forms of the Station fauna have been very patiently and thoroughly worked out from day to day for nearly two years by Mr. Adolph Hempel. As most of them could not be studied to advantage except in a living state, they have been determined as fast as collected. More than five hundred eollections have thus been eritically overhauled and annotated lists of species and descriptions of new forms have been prepared and either published or made ready for publication, in the Bulletin of the State Labora- tory of Natural History. 102 species of Rotifera (three new) and 80 species of Protozoa (five new) have thus been listed from our situation by Mr. Hem- pel and several others have been identified by Dr. Kofoid in the course of his studies of the plankton since Mr. Hempel’s work was suspended as a con- sequence of injury to his eyes. Among these later acquisitions was one of the most remarkable and important rotifers known to science, a species of the genus Trochosphera, which is famous in the annals of zodlogy for the light whieh it throws upon the zodlogical relationships of the Rotifera at large. This genus, founded on a species discovered by Professor Semper in 1872 in pools in the rice fields of the Phillipine Islands, is now further repre- sented only by collections made at Brisbane, Australia and in the Yangtse- Kiang, in China, and by the Illinois River specimens observed by Dr. Kofoid in the summer of 1896.
CHEMICAL DETERMINATIONS.
In a thorough going study of the wcological system of an aquatic situation, the chemical condition of the waters will necessarily be an important element, and the Station has consequently done what was possible to it in its present state to institute and encourage chemical studies of the waters from which its biological materials are collected. It is much to be desired that very fre- quent examinations should be made of the waters at all the typical substa- tions with a view to tracing their chemical history at each throughout the day and under the changing conditions of season, stage of water, and the like. The gaseous contents of the waters are of special interest and import- ance to us, since they have probably most to do with the welfare of aquatie animals and plants. It has been impossible, however, during these first years to provide for more than the usual form of chemical examination of water as made for sanitary purposes and even this would have been imprac- ticable if the chemical department of the University of Illinois had not re- sponded generously to my request that such analyses be undertaken.
Beginning in May, 1894, collections of water from the river and from warious other points in the Station field have been made at regular intervals by Station assistants and shipped to the Chemical Labératory of the Univer- sity, where they have been examined either by Professor A. W. Palmer or
by assistants working under his direction. Since the beginning of this work it has been merged in that of a Chemical Survey of the waters of the State established at the University in consequence of appropriations made by the State legislature to that end during the winter of 1895. One hundred and ninety-three analyses in all have now been completed and a report setting forth the comparative results will be published during the current year.
REPORTS AND PUBLICATIONS.
The final,major product of our Station work must be in the form of pub- lished papers and reports, our material accumulations being of merely secondary interest and value and often of only temporary use. Necessarily, however, so soon after the organization of the work, it has not been possible to prepare and to publish papers of a sort adequately to represent the ideals of the Station management or to illustrate its final ends. Nevertheless, considerable contri- butions to science resulting from the investigations of the Station staff have already been printed or are now in press and the preparation of manuscript is going actively forward in several departments. Quite in accordance with our original expectation, visiting students who have availed themselves of the facilities.of the Station have prepared or are now preparing papers embody- ing the results of their investigations, credit for which must belong in part
-to our establishment, without which they would not have been written. y
The principal contributions now in print are papers by Mr. Hart, Mr. Hempel, and Professor Smith, The first of these is an article by Mr. Hart on the ento- mology of the Illinois River and adjacent waters, filling one hundred and twenty-five pages of our Laboratory Bulletin and illustrated by fifteen half- tone plates. Professor Smith’s additions to a knowledge of our oligochxte worms have appeared as two papers of the Laboratory Bulletin, deseribing four new species and a new genus of these animals, with a large amount of anatomical and histological detail. We have also printed an article by Mr. W. H. Ashmead, of the United States National Museum, on parasitic Hymenoptera bred from aquatic insects at Havana, containing descriptions of three new species. Four new species of Protozoa and three of Rotifera from Station situations have been described by Mr. Hempel in an article of the State Laboratory Bulletin, accompanied by five plates of illustrative figures.
We have now going through the press a third paper by Professor Smith, containing a description of a new genus and two new species of oligochxte worms from Havana, and of one from Florida, together with a deseription of the reproductive organs of Pristina, upon which subject nothing has hereto- fore been known. This article will be accompanied by four plates. A paper on the Ostracoda. of North America, by Mr. R. W. Sharpe, a graduate stu- dent of the University, is also in press. This article has been made to include the product of a careful examination of the collections made in this group ‘from the opening of the Station to the midsummer of 1896. It is accompanied ‘by ten plates.
Mr, Hempel’ s observations on the Protozoa and the Rotitera of the Station, accumulated during two years’ continuous study, are in hand in the ferm of
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a completed manuscript, accompanied by thirty folded sheets setting forth im tabular form the distribution of the various species at each substation and also throughout the Station field for the different months of the year. This report was finished last September and will be printed without delay.
Dr. Kofoid has lately filed a report, which is about to go to press, on methods and apparatus in use in plankton work at the Station, accompanied by seven illustrative plates. He has in hand six other papers, which will doubtless be ready for publication before the end of the current fiscal year. These will inelude reports on the local distribution of the plankton in the Illinois River and its adjacent waters, on the sources of error in the plankton method, on the plankton of the river during the years 1894, 1895, and 1896, on the plankton of Phelps Lake,—a body of water of the ephemeral type,—an article on Trochosphera, and one on Cotylaspis insigne—a remarkable parasite of the river clams.
Professor Smith has under way a general report on our oligochete collec- tions, to consist of about fifty pages of text with several plates. This report will contain a synoptic key and illustrated descriptions of species for use in identifying forms occurring in the State.
Mr. Hart, Station Entomologist, and Mr. J. G. Needham are working con- jointly upon a report on the dragon-flies of the Station waters and their vicin- ity and a list of the mollusks with biographical and cecological notes is in course of preparation by Mr. Hart.
Two senior students of the zoélogical department of the University, Mr. E. B. Forbes and Mr. F. W. Schacht, are engaged in thesis investigations, under the personal supervision of the Director of the Station, which will result in the preparation and publication of papers on entomostracan groups, one the Cyelopide, the other the Centropagide, of North America, including of course the Station collections.
I have myself undertaken to prepare, and have nearly finished, a compre- hensive article on the Crustacea of the Biological Station field, with analytical synopses of all the groups and illustrative figures for the use of the student of our aquatic fauna.
A paper on the planarian worms found at Havana is now reported as prac- tically ready for the press in the hands of Dr. W. M. Woodworth, of Harvard University. Articles in course of preparation by visiting investigators are “The Mycetozoa collected near Havana, Illinois, during the summer of 1896,”’ by H. C. Beardslee, of University School, Cleveland, Ohio, and ‘‘Statistical Record of the Trematoda Parasitic in the Unionide,’? by Professor H. M. Kelly, of Cornell College, Lowa.
The excellent work done by the Station Artist, Miss Lydia M. Hart, in illus- tration of nearly all the papers of the foregoing list, is deserving of particular mention. One hundred and three drawings have been made by her of new or otherwise interesting animal forms, besides several drawings of pieces of ap- paratus and other features of the equipment. “he
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General mention may also be made in this connection of the publieation and widespread distribution of a preliminary report upon the Station* illus- trated by seventeen plates of the situation and surroundings, and of a small illustrated pamphlet descriptive of the Station and its work, inviting advanced students and other competent investigators to share its privileges during the vacation months of 1896.
SUMMER OPENING OF THE STATION.
With the launching and equipment of the cabin-boat it first became possi- ble for us to offer the facilities of the Station to students outside our own official group. Anticipating this opportunity, a pamphlet of twenty-four pages, containing twelve half-tone plates,was distributed in the fall of 1895, deseribing the Station and its surroundings, its equipment, its plan of opera- tions, and its program for the season, and making the following offering.
“‘The establishment and recent equipment of the Biological Station of the University of Illinois will afford a unique opportunity to a limited number of competent students to become acquainted with the plant and animal forms and with the system of life of a continental river and its dependent waters, and with comprehensive methods and modern apparatus of investigation in aquatic biology. This opportunity, it is believed, will be valued not only by interior students who would like to enlarge their personal knowledge of the aquatic life of their own territory, but also by investigators of experience in other fields who may wish to extend their studies, for the sake of compari- son, into a department of American biology hitherto practically unexplored.”’
‘Kor these reasons, and notwithstanding the fact that this Station was estab- lished especially as a means of researeh by its own staff, it has been decided open it for the months of June, July, and August to biological investiga- tors and to students of some experience in zodlogieal or botanical work. The present accommodations are sufficient for only sixteen persons additional to the Station force. Applications for admission must consequently be made in advance and at as early.a day as practicable, with precise specification of the period for which the applicant wishes to occupy a table in the Station laboratory.’’
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * =~
‘* Applications for admission to the Station will be entertained this first year only from independent investigators and from students of biology who have had _ sufficient experience to render systematic instruction and continuous supervision unnecessary. Other things being equal, instructors in biological science in colleges and publhe high schools will be given the preference.”’
‘*Tables on the laboratory boat or in the rooms on shore, and other general laboratory facilities, will be provided for those whose. applieations are ac- cepted; ordinary microscopic reagents will be supplied; and access will be given to the biological library of the Station. Books will also be loaned, as needed, from the library of the State Laboratory of Natural History and
*See Bien. Rep. Direc. Ill. State Lab. Nat. Hist., 1898-94, p. 14.
from that of the University of Illinois. Occupants of the laboratory will be expected to furnish their own microscopes or to pay a small fee for the use of those of the University. They are advised to bring also any collecting appa- ‘atus in their possession, as the laboratory equipment may otherwise be insufficient for all wishing to use it. Students must furnish their own al- cohol for private collections, and especially expensive reagents—such as osmic acid or platinum-chloride.”’
‘*Although the Station is established and maintained primarily for a study of life histories, interactions of organisms, and reactions with the environment, no restriction will be placed upon the lines of zodlogical or botanical work to be pursued by those in attendance. In making application, however, the candidate should describe the nature of the study he wishes to pursue, and should also indicate the kind and amount of preparation for such work he may already have had. Applications will not, as a rule, be considered later than a fortnight previous to the time at which a table is desired, and no formal permission will be given fora stay of less than two weeks. Within these limitations visitors may come and go at any time within the months of June, July and August.”’
‘*Reports on the Protozoa, rotifers, oligochete worms, Cladocera, and insects of the Station, and perhaps on one or two other groups also, will be in print by ehe Ist of June. and will be furnished free of charge to those desiring to make studies in these groups.* These papers will contain analytical keys, descriptions of species, genera, etc., or references to descriptive literature accessible at the Station, together with much biological and ceeological detail.’’
‘‘While no provision is made for formal instruction, it is expected that the membership of the Station will be organized as a biological elub to hold stated meetings for conference, discussion, and occasional lectures by the =) . 2 s eye ahs . ss Station force or by visiting specialists.
**An incidental fee of $5 a month will be charged to each participant.”’
The privileges thus tendered were fina[ly accepted by seventeen persons, who were in attendance during the summer for periods ranging from three to ten weeks. Although the number of tables available for outside use was only fifteen, not all of this group were present at a time, and the floating labora- tory afforded sufficient accommodations for all. who came. The states and institutions represented and the subjects to which special attention was given are shown by the following list:
C, C, Adams, B. S., Assistant in Biology, Wesleyan University, Bloomir g- ton, Illinois. Dragon-flies.
H. C. Beardslee, A. B., Instructor in Seience, University School, Cleve- land, Ohio. Fleshy fungi, Myxomycetes, and aquatie flora.
Miss L. L. Conover, B. S., Teacher of Botany, High School, Detroit, Michigan. Algze and Myxomycetes.
* It proved impossible to carry out the intention expressed in this paragraph, but the
unlimited use of the library facilities of the State Laboratory of Natural History made fully good to visitors the substance of this offering.
28
Charles Fordyce, Principal of the Normal Department, Biology, Nebraska Wesleyan University, University Place, Nebraska. Fresh-water Alge# and general biology.
H. A. Fraser, B. S., Teacher of Biology, High School, Joliet, Illinois. Fresh-water sponges and general biology.
W. K. Hill, A. B., Superintendent of Schools, Carthage, Illinois. Fresh- water Algw.
G. W. Horton, Superintendent of Schools, Dwight, Illinois. Rhizopoda and general biology.
H. M. Kelly, A. M., Professor of Biology, Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, lowa. Trematoda parasitic in clams.
J. G. Needham, M. 8., Instructor in Zodlogy, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. Life histories of dragon-flies.
C. 8. Oglevee, B. S., Instructor in Zoédlogy and Botany, Lincoln Univer- sity, Lincoln, Illinois. Protozoa and general biology.
C, EK. Phillips, Millington, Illinois. Student at Eureka College, Eureka, Illinois. General biology.
Mrs. W. 8. Pierce, Teacher of Science, High School, Havana, Illinois. General bidlogy.
Maurice Ricker, B. S., Teacher of Chemistry and Biology, High School, Burlington, Iowa. Hydrachnide and general biology.
L. 8. Ross, M. §8., Professor of Biology and Geology, Drake University, Des Moines, lowa. Cladocera of Iowa and Manitoba.
F. W. Schacht (U. of I., 97), Moline, Illinois. The Centropagide of the loeality in connection with thesis investigation.
_R. W. Sharpe, B. 8., Teacher of Biology, High School, Danville, Illinois. Ostracoda,
_C. A. Whiting, Se. D., Professor of Biology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. General biology.
FINANCIAL RESOURCES AND EXPENDITURES.
The entire sum available for the equipment of the Station and its maintenance for three years and three months has been $10,300, $1,800 of which was ap- propriated by the Trustees of the University March 13, 1894, for the com- mencement of the work, and the remainder of which is derived from legisla- tive appropriation made in June, 1895. Twothousand five hundred dollars of this latter appropriation was for building and equipment and $6,000 for running ex- penses for two-years. The equipment fund has been expended in the pur- chase and modification of the Station launch ‘‘Illini,”’ ing, and equipping the floating laboratory and in providing various minor items of apparatus and furniture.
in building, furnish-
The floating laboratory or cabin-boat cost $1,573 furnished and equipped, the contract price for construction being $1,255. Five thousand five hundred and six dollars had been expended September 30, 1896, on account of salaries and general expenses of the Station, a balance of $1,394 remaining in hand to the credit of the appropriation. The salaries for this period of thirty months have been $4,218,—an average of about $140 per month,—and the general ‘expenses’ of the work have been $2,187—approximately $73 per month.
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 ex- 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’ onr wishes in this respect. As already said under another head in this report, chemical 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 publie 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- peuse. Furthermore, the smaller animal forms—the rotifers and the Protozoa— _can 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- quent determination practicable. Our plant collections can consequently still be worked up by a botanist having an expert knowledge of aquatic forms. It 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 ecology and economies of our aquatic biology cannot possibly be reached.
The efficiency of our corps of workers and the quantity of the results of their work would be very greatly increased if provision were made for their continuous maintenance on Quiver Lake. Our daily trips to and from the town proved very wasteful of time and opportunity, and have added greatly to the expense of running the Station launch. Furthermore, notwithstanding the great usefulness of our floating laboratory, it is in some respects insuffi- cient for the more advanced stages of our work, and should be supplemented by a laboratory building in the immediate neighborhood. Experimental re- searches will presently require a larger equipment than that now at our dis- posal in the jars and small aquaria to which we are at present confined.
BO Finally, if the Station is to be utilized to the fullest extent as a means of instruction to teachers in the public schools, permanent provision for this work must certainly be made.
These various needs can be met by the purchase of a small tract of land now lying practically waste, by the erection of a small building on the bank of Quiver Lake which shall combine additional facilities for laboratory inves- tigation with living quarters for the Station staff, by the excavation of ponds on the Station grounds and the construction of a water tank and pump, and by the building of a large pavilion, with some connected rooms, for mid- summer work by visiting students.
Concerning the immediate future of the work, I beg to say that it is my present wish and intention, if the Station is maintained on a seale and under conditions to make it possible, to extend its work especially along three prin- cipal lines. The preliminary systematic survey having been now largely com- pleted, I hope next to select specific problems for solution by experimental methods, working towards definite cecological results of scientific value. Studies of the lower forms of aquatic life in our situation are now so far advanced as to make it profitable to bring into our scheme of regular opera- tions the fishes of these waters. A particularly thorough, continuous, and comprehensive study of them should be made from various points of view, in the hope especially of helping the fish-culturist to more intelligent methods and to more certain and permanent results.
Although the Station was founded primarily for investigation and its ex- penditures up to the present time have all been made directly to that end, it 1s very apparent that it has a highly important work to perform in the inter- ests of public education. I hope to oceupy fully and at once this broad field of usefulness which now lies so plainly open before us, not only by continuing and enlarging our offerings to advanced students and to investigating natural- ists, but especially by providing all needed facilities and instruction in field biology and in special pedagogical methods to present and prospective teachers of the natural history subjects in all grades of the publie school. As a first step to this object, I have already submitted to you a plan for a summer school of field biology to be opened during the vacation season of next year. This work should, I do not doubt, become a permanent and prominent fea- ture of the Station operations.
I ought not to close this general review and presentation of the affairs of the Biological Station without calling your attention to the cordial and appre- ciative manner in which our enterprise has been received by expert judges of high rank in this country and abroad. Important articles on its work have appeared in several of the leading scientific journals of Europe and America, and our official correspondence also contains many expressions of warm interest in our success from eminent men in various parts of the world.
It gives me further pleasure to express to you my high appreciation of the capable, energetic, and suecessful work of my associates on the Station staff. Neither the broiling heat of the July sun nor the midwinter’s cold have been able to interrupt or even to delay the regular progress of the very laborious
dl
and exacting routine of their operations; and the steady strain of long months of confining work at the microscope has been taken by them with the patient enthusiasm of the trained investigator at work in a fruitful field. The conta- gion of the example of this little group of indefatigable naturalists is clearly affecting the life of related departments of the University, and it must in time make itself sensibly felt throughout the state and the country in the advance- ment of biological science and in the improvement of our methods of biologi- cal instruction. Respectfully submitted. S.. A. ForBEs, November 30, 1896. Director.
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S.A. FORBES, Director.
mane NINAL REPORT
DIRECTOR
1897-98.
URBANA, ILLINOIS. 1898.
ILLINOIS STATE LABORATORY OF NATURAL HISTORY
S. A, FORBES, Director.
PIENNIAL REPORT
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1897-98.
URBANA, ILLINOIS.
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BIENNIAL REPORT
ILLINOIS STATE LABORATORY
OF
NATURAL HISTORY.
To the Trustees of the University of Illinois.
GENTLEMEN: In pursuance of your general instructions as contained in your Proceedings for 1892 (June meeting), | submit the following report of operations of the State Laboratory of Natural History for the past two years.
These operations have been connected almost wholly with the work of the State Entomologist or with that of the Biological Station. As the State Entomologist’s operations will be reported, under the law, to the Governor previous to the next session of the legislature, I will only say with regard to them here that they have been directed mainly to the study of the life histories of some of the insects injurious to corn, to an examination of the shade trees and other ornamental vegetation of several of the larger towns of central Illinois, and to work on the San José scale, distributed throughout the State.
Further investigation of the corn insects was undertaken with a view to preparing for my next biennial report a second instalment of a monograph upon that subject. The study of the insects injurious to shade trees is the beginning of what I intend to make an exhaustive survey of that topic in this State ; and the work on the San Jose scale has taken the form of a further examination of suspected premises with a view to the possible occurrence of hitherto undetected colonies of that insect in the State, a very thorough and careful spraying with insecti- cide solution of premises known to harbor the scale, the intro- duction of two fungus parasites of the scale obtained by me on
a personal visit to Florida last spring, and several lines of experimental work undertaken in the hope of finding some cheaper and more effective insecticide than the one now gener- ally in use. In this same connection I have provided for a general inspection of nurseries throughout the State, made at the expense of the nurserymen. Upon receipt of the report of the condition of these nurseries from my inspectors, I have given to nurserymen official certificates setting forth the facts as to the existence on their premises of insects likely to be con- . veyed in trade to the injury of their customers.
The operations of the Biological Station have been carried on during the past two years along lines practically the same as those previously reported upon, except that we have done much more during the last two years with fishes than previously, with the expectation of completing a formal report upon the fishes of Lhnois on which considerable progress had been made by me lone before the opening of the Station.
This study of the fishes of the Station field was taken up systematically in July, 1897, by Prof. Frank Smith, and con- tinued by him without interruption until September 1 of that year. In the summer of 1898 this was passed over to Mr. Wallace Craig, assigned to the Biological Station as its resident naturalist, and he will make this his principal occupation dur- ing this entire year. He has been handsomely provided with various kinds of apparatus for the collection of fishes in all the Station situations, including seines of all sorts, fish traps of various size and construction, set nets, and trammel nets. This work is being so conducted as to give us correct ideas not only of the species occurring at the Station, but of their relative abundance and local distribution, their haunts, their habits, their regular migrations and irregular movements, their breed- ing times and places, their rate of growth, their food, their diseases and their enemies, and, in short, the whole economy of each kind there represented and of the whole assemblage taken together as a community group.
Extensive studies of the aquatic entomology of the situation have also been made, and an elaborate paper on ephemerids and dragon-flies, the joint contribution of Messrs. Hart and Adams, of the Laboratory staff, and of Professor J. G@. Needham, who
worked with us during a part of the summer of 1897, is now nearly ready for the press.
The so-called plankton work, the systematic study, that is, of the minuter forms of plant and animal life suspended in the water, has gone steadily forward under Dr. Kofoid’s immediate care. Refinements and improvements of method, new forms of apparatus, and a vast mass of material which has been largely identified and studied by him are some of the more obvious results of our recent work in this field. No part of the work of the Station attracts more general attention among scientific men or is likely to lead to more interesting and important results.
By the Chemical Department of the University regular analyses of the waters of certain selected localities have been made during the entire two years, including one series of analyses of the gaseous contents of the water, made at Havana, one for each of twenty-four consecutive hours. This chemical work combined with the continuous biological work of the Station will, when generalized, furnish a most substantial and authoritative body of knowledge of the conditions of the waters of the middle Illinois previous to the opening of the Chicago drainage canal which can scarcely fail to have a high utility for comparison with the results of similar studies made after that event.
Our main equipment—the cabin boat, the launch, and the smaller boats—has served our purpose perfectly, and the Station property is in good order and condition in all respects.
The Summer School of 1898, for whose expenses you voted a guarantee fund of $800, proved a disappointment only in the number in attendance, a deficiency easily accounted for mm part by the lateness of the period at which we were able to announce our session, and in part by the fact that we could not offer last year certain local and personal inducements which may easily be provided for another session. Authority to advertise the school was not given until the March meeting of the Board this year, too short an interval thus remaining before our opening in June. For want of any special building of our own we were obliged to resort to the village school building at Havana, generously placed at our disposal without compensation by the school trustees, and students of the School were thus compelled
6
to live in the town. Vacation life in a village boarding house with work in a school room offers too little relief from the ordinary experience of the student or teacher to be especially attractive in itself. If the School is to be maintained—and I sincerely hope that it may be—we should have a plot of land on the banks of Quiver Lake, two miles and a half above Havana, should have erected there a building suitable for summer use as a students’ laboratory, should provide facilities for life in camp to those who prefer them, and should also make it possible for students to live either at that place or in town.
Fifteen students were in attendance throughout our term of four weeks. The only instructors regularly engaged were Assistant Professor Frank Smith, of the Department of Zoology, and Instructor C. F. Hottes, of the Department of Botany. The work was carefully planned and very thoroughly and efficiently done, and was received very cordially by all in attendance.
Publication of papers has been made by the State Labo- ratory to the full limit of our appropriation for this purpose, nine articles of our Laboratory Bulletin, comprising four hundred and thirty-eight pages of text and sixty plates, having been printed and distributed during the last two years. They set forth mainly the general results of our Biological Station work combined with the results of studies by advanced students and the Station staff upon other collections of the State Laboratory, but include also an article on scale insects of the State and one on insect disease. The influence of the State Laboratory upon the Department of Zodlogy is shown by the fact that three of the above papers, each a valuable contribution to science, have been prepared by University students in the course of their work for first and second degrees. Such work would have been entirely beyond their reach except for the materials, equipment, and literature provided by the Laboratory, which has also borne the expense of their publication and illustration.
With respect to the future of this work I am strongly of the opinion that a decided advance should be made in the Natural History Survey, for which the Laboratory is responsible under the law of its establishment. The annual appropriations made of late have been too small to provide for more than the neces- sary operations of the Entomologist’s office, which they are
made to cover, and those of the Biological Station, with some incidental general work naturally growing out of the operations of these two establishments. I see no reason why the State of Illinois should not provide in a suitable manner for the ener- getic prosecution of this Survey work which it long ago author- ized, and I propose, consequently, to ask of the next legislature a suitable sum for this purpose and a separate sum for the economic investigations for which the State Entomologist is responsible. I think, also, that the legislature might well be asked to enlarge the field of the State Laboratory of Natural History to include an economic geological survey, with such topographical work as this might require, and a biological sur- vey of the water supplies of the State, conducted with special reference to sanitary interests, a subject which is certainly not less important in some of its aspects than that of their chemistry.
For details respecting the various departments of the work of the Biological Station you are respectfully referred to the appended reports of the Station Superintendent, Dr. C. A. Kofoid, of Prof. A. W. Palmer, Director of the Chemical Survey, — of My. Chas. A. Hart, Entomologist of the Station, and of Prof. Frank Smith, who served for a time as its Assistant Zodlogist and as principal instructor in the Summer School:
respectfully submitted. S. A. Forses, Director.
REPORT OF THE SUPERINTENDENT OF THE BIOLOGICAL STATION.
To the Director of the Laboratory.
Sir: The past two years have offered new and interesting conditions in the environment in which the work of the Illinois Biological Station has been prosecuted. The period of 1894 and 1895 was one of typical low water, without an extensive. rise of the river during the spring and early summer, when such floods usually occur. On the other hand, these years were not marked by long uninterrupted periods of very low water. Under these conditions of two years of generally low water, without marked fluctuations, the lakes were thoroughly choked with vegetation, and even the banks of the river itself became fringed with a rank aquatic growth. A rise to 12.6 feet, culminating January 6, 1896, was succeeded by a series of minor floods at intervals of about two months throughout the year. The net result was an increase in the average height of the river for the year, which was 6.87 feet above low-water mark—fully two feet above that of the average for the two years preceding. This was, then, a high-water year, without marked fluctua- tions, and the result was that the vegetation remained to a considerable extent in the lakes and the river. The year 1897 opened with rising water, which culminated January 23 at 12.9 feet, while a subsequent rise on March 27 reached a height of sixteen feet—the highest point attained since 1892. (See Plate II.) From this maximum the river fell slowly through the four months that followed, reaching a minimum early in August. From this time until the close of the year, in conse- quence of a general drought throughout the State, low water persisted, there being only a slight rise as evaporation was checked during the cooler weather of autumn. In spite of the long-continued low water the average height for the year was 6.9 feet—a slight increase over the preceding year. There was thus present the somewhat unusual condition of long- continued high water during the first half of the year followed by an uninterrupted period of unusually low water in the second half, the change from the one to the other being quite abrupt. Under these circumstances the vegetation was largely removed or its excessive growth ‘prevented. The contrast
between high- and low-water conditions in the Station field is well shown by several of the plates appended to this re- port.* This long-continued low water worked marked changes in the topography of the bottomlands adjacent to Havana. Phelps Laket+ dried up earlier than it did the preceding year, Thompson’s Lake showed a marked diminution, principally at the northern and southern ends, long stretches of soft mud or matted vegetation in which dead fish were abundant being exposed. This mud, after a few weeks exposure, hardened and cracked open to a depth of a foot or eighteen inches, and a erowth of shore grasses began to spring up on it. Quiver Lake, especially along the west shore and in the region known as Dogfish Lake, was considerably reduced in area, and in the absence of any considerable amount of vegetation its depth was decreased more than usual. Flag Lake, which in most years is a marsh with one to four feet of water filled with rushes, arrow leaves, water smartweed, water-llies, and the lotus, dried .up early and a wagon road was established across its bed. Havana Lake, the expanse of the river above the mouth of Spoon River, presented the unusual appearance of a narrow river channel flanked on either side by a broad mud bank. ‘The filling in and extension of these banks by the deposit of silt during recent years has been very marked, and is followed by an extension of the swamp willows over the rising banks.
In a general way the hydrological conditions of 1898 resembled those of 1897. The rise of the river began in Janu- ary and continued through the winter, culminating April 2 at eighteen feet, a point equaled or exceeded but twice since 1879, at which time records were begun at the Government dam at Copperas Creek, eighteen miles above the location of the Station. As in 1897, the high water continued during the early summer, dropping rapidly in August to the minimum stage. It did not, however, reach the extreme condition of the previous year, several minor fluctuations having occurred at frequent intervals during the fall months. The reduction in the aquatic vegetation begun in the previous year has continued. The increased activity in the fishing industry has also contributed largely to the removal Al yi *For these localities see Plate I.
+Compare Plates III. and IV., and V. and VI. For differences with respect to mid- summer vegetation at similar stage of water, see Plates VIT. and VIII.
10
of the vegetation from the lakes and the river on the fishing erounds, so that the river is now practically free from vegeta- tion, as 1s also the main body of Quiver Lake and almost the whole of Thompson’s Lake, only a restricted area at the south- ern end retaining its former condition.
In previous years the field headquarters of the Station have been on Quiver Lake, either at Foster’s Landing or at the Indian mounds. In the fall of 1896 the new laboratory boat was brought down to town and was stationed at the public landing along the river front. This location has been retained during the last two years with the exception of a week in August, 1898, when the boat was moved up to the Twin Mounds during some continued work upon the plankton and gas analyses-in the Illinois River near that point. The advantages of the location at town are the saving of the time required for transit to and from headquarters in the field and the expense of running the launch on these trips, and the ready access to the Station from living quarters at all times, while the distance from the collect- ing grounds is not greatly increased. Some disadvantages attend this location. The sheltered situation and the close proximity to the sand bluff increase the heat in the boat during the hot days in summer, and the nearness to the steamboat landing oreatly increases the risk of damage to the boats and launch by the disturbance in the water caused by incoming and outgoing steamboats. Ropes and eavils are frequently broken, and boats are torn loose by the swells which follow in the wake of the larger steamers. On three separate occasions a steamboat in the hands of an old and experienced pilot collided with our flotilla, resulting in the crushing and sinking of the steam launch in one instance, and in the breakage of glassware aboard the laboratory boat at another time. With the considerable and now increasing number of river craft of all sorts seeking tem- porary or permanent anchorage on the river front, we have been eradually crowded to the least desirable location, where the shore 1s somewhat springy, and where at low water access to our boat is possible only by means of a dike of sand ora trestle- work of planking, owing to the soft mud which is rapidly filling in the river front at this point. At such times our location is neither inviting nor salubrious. The crowding of the boats and
11
the lax care usually given to such property in this locality ereatly increase our danger of loss by wreck or fire while we remain in our present location. The experience of the past two years has only emphasized the necessity of the location of the Station at some suitable point —if at Havana, on Quiver Lake where we can control property which will afford us an abun- dance of room, freedom from disturbance, facilities for carrying on the shore operations that pertain to our work, and the loca- tion of breeding ponds. :
The Station was occupied by the Station staff and in full operation in 1897 during the months of July, August, and September, and in 1898 from June 13 to October 1. In addition to this, monthly visits were made to it for plankton work during the winter and spring of 1897, and beginning with the autumn of 1897 visits were made for the same pur- pose until the full opening of the Station in June, 1898. As a result of these visits a very full series of winter collections has been accumulated. Since September 1, 1898, Mr. Wallace Craig, resident Assistant at the Station, has been in charge during my absence. Previous to this time the property of the Station was cared for at such times by Mr. Miles Newberry, who has been in our employ as general collector, janitor and engineer for the past four years. His service has been efficient and faithful in all the manifold and: varied tasks which fall to his hands.
The work of the Station has been in the main prosecuted along the lines established in previous years, with a few expansions in some directions and curtailments in others. The primary purpose of the Station, that of investigation, has been carried on along three principal lines: entomology, ichthy- ology, and the quantitative investigation of the minute life of the water. The entomological work has been in the hands of Mr. C. A. Hart, who was at the Station during considerable intervals in 1897 and 1898.
Investigation of the fishes was taken up in July, 1897, by Prof. Frank Smith, and was continued by him until September 1 of that year. In the summer of 1898 this work was taken up by Mx. Craig, and additional equipment has been provided. The Station was equipped with a hundred-yard river seine of
; 12
an inch-and-a-half mesh, hung to fish eight feet; a forty-yard minnow seine of one-fourth-inch mesh, hung to fish five feet; a thirty-foot minnow seine, hung to fish four feet; a Baird seine of the same dimensions; and a trammel net thirty yards in length and five feet in depth. The additions to the equipment consist of two set nets, one of three-fourths-inch mesh and eighteen-inch hoops, the other of an inch-and-a-half mesh and four-foot hoops. Thirteen fish traps of quarter-inch galvanized wire netting were constructed especially for the work in deep water and in places where a minnow seine could not be used. They consist of a cylinder of netting ten inches in diameter, one end of which is closed by a circle of wood and the other by two successive funnels sloping inward, each with an opening three inches in diameter. For the capture of the smallest fish the nets are covered with fine wire cloth, and their efficiency is also increased by the use of wings of the same material or of minnow netting.
The plankton operations of the last two years have been carried on with increased regularity and greater attention to the correction of possible sources of error. The number of stations subject to regular examination at the beginning of the period covered by this report was seven; viz., the [llinois River two and a half miles above Havana, Quiver Lake, Dogfish Lake, Thompson’s Lake, Flag Lake, Phelps Lake, and Spoon River, the latter having been added to the list in August, 1896. (See Plate I.) The Illinois River station was visited at intervals of one month until July, 1896, in which month a number of ex- aminations were made at frequent intervals during a remark- able development of a filamentous diatom, Melosira, in the plankton, and in correlation with gas analyses conducted by Professor Palmer. Weekly collections upon Tuesdays were begun August 8, 1896, and have since been maintained except when the condition of the ice or sickness necessitated a slight shifting of the day of collection.
The station in Quiver Lake was visited during intervals of one month during the first half of 1897, but during the latter part of July and the months of August and September the inter- val was reduced to a week. In October fortnightly visits were commenced, and have since been maintained. In the summer
13
of 1895 a plankton station had been established in the west arm of Quiver Lake, known as Dogfish Lake. Examinations were continued in this locality for two years at intervals of a month or less, but were discontinued in July, 1897. During much of the year the conditions at this station differed but slightly from those in Quiver Lake. . Vegetation is a trifle more abundant and its duration is more extended. Except at times of high water there is no current passing through this arm of the lake. The difficulty of access to this station at times of low water—due to the. dense mat of Ceratophyllum through which the plankton boat must be rowed—were increased by the erec- tion of a fence of wire netting across the mouth of the lake in the construction of a fish pound. In view of the similarity to Quiver Lake and the difficulty of access, it seemed desirable to drop this station from the regular list, especially as the two years’ collections of its micro-flora and micro-fauna will suffice for detailed comparison with the plankton of the main body of the lake.
Monthly plankton collections were made in Thompson’s Lake during the first half of 1897, but in July of that year a fortnightly interval was adopted and has since been maintained. This station is, next to the river, the most important one on our list, being located in the largest permanent body of water within the field of our operations. During the period of high water (three to four months of the year), it is of easy access, as it is possible at such times to run the launch through the ‘‘cut road” across the bottomlands to the south end of the lake. As the water falls access may still be had for some time with a row boat through the. ‘‘ cut road;” or, at still lower water, through the ‘‘swale,” a tortuous channel through the bottomland under- brush from the foot of Flag Lake to Thompson’s Lake. When, however, the river falls below six feet, the only approach to this station is via Thompson’s Lake Slough, a bayou connecting the lake with the river, leaving the latter at a point about six miles above Havana. Shallow water and a rank growth of aquatic vegetation found in some years at the northern end of the lake soon render it impossible to enter from the slough with the launch, and when the water falls below three feet a mud bar at the northern end of the slough necessitates making the remainder
14
of the trip in a row boat. During the months of September, October, and the most of November, 1897, the river stood at the present low-water mark, that is, about two feet by the gauge, and the lake was drained to the lowest limit reached since our operations were commenced at Havana. Its bed at the north end, for a distance of about three quarters of a mile, was exposed, leaving an expanse of the softest black ooze, through which a narrow, winding channel several feet in width, containing sey- eral inches of water, was kept open by our boats and those of occasional sportsmen. When winds from the north prevailed, even this insignificant highway was left bare. Under these con- ditions ingress and egress over and through this bed of ooze be- came a task of no small difficulty.
, Owing to these two routes of approach to the lake, two points of collection have been established; one off Sand Point, in the northern half, and one about half a mile below Prickett’s Land- ing, in the southern half. Both are in open water and at a con- siderable distance from vegetation, and are equally typical loca- tions. Access to one of these two places is always possible during the period of open water or when the lake is covered with thick ice, but when the ice is thin or rotten, it is at times only possible to work out a few rods from the shore with the aid of ax and ice-hook.
Plankton operations were not carried on in Phelps Lake in 1895, owing to the failure of the river to overflow the bottom- lands sufficiently. to invade and fill the lake. During this year a heavy crop of corn was raised in its fertile bed, but before it was harvested the following winter the water asserted its claim to this territory and has since held possession. The rise which culminated January 1, 1896, filled the lake, and the water slowly decreased until November, when the few shallow pools that remained were frozen solid. Water again entered the lake January 6, 1897, and the last pool was dried up about Sep- tember 1 the same year. Toward the last of February, 1898, rising waters again poured into the lake, and owing to the high water of the past spring continued to occupy it and the adjacent territory until the middle of July. Since that time the depth of the water has decreased rapidly and by the middle of Septem- ber the lake was reduced to a few large pools. During the first
15
half of 1896 monthly collections were made, and since that date the interval has been reduced to a fortnight.
During the past year a drainage district has been organized in the territory including and adjacent to Phelps Lake. The object of this organization is the reclamation of the fertile bottom south of Spoon River. A large dike is being built along the north limit of the district, reaching the river a short distance above the north end of Phelps Lake. From this point it passes southward along the river bank for several miles to a point some distance below the mouth of Phelps Lake Slough, and then turns westward to the west bluff. The drainage of the enclosed area will be accomplished by several large ditches leading to the southeast, where pumping works are planned to insure the removal of the water when the surrounding country is flooded. Owing to the drainage of this lake our operations in this locality must cease with the present season, which leaves us in possession of quantitative collections extending through three years, in each of which the water entered in the winter or spring overtlow, and was slowly removed by evaporation and seepage throughout the summer months, the catastrophe cul- minating in the late fall. We have thus in our possession a basis for a tolerably complete record of the seasonal fluctua- tions and changes in the fauna and flora incident to the drying up of this ephemeral body of water.
Since September, 1896, collections have been made in Spoon River at intervals of a month or less, and during this time a number of qualitative towings have been taken for us by Mr. W. R. Deverman, of Topeka, Ill., from the waters of Quiver Creek. We have thus a good series of collections from tributary streams of the river for a comparison with those of the river itself.
A plankton station was established in September, 1895, in Flag Lake, a large marsh between Thompson’s Lake and the Illinois River. Collections have been made here from that time at intervals of a month or less and were continued in 1897 until July. Owing to the abundance of vegetation in Flag Lake this station was extremely difficult of access during the summer months, and owing to the abundance of flocculent debris of vegetation it was at all times difficult to secure a satisfactory
F 16
quantitative collection from this body of water. As it was necessary to reduce the amount of field work, it seemed best for these reasons to drop this station permanently from the list of places subject to regular visitation. During the summer of 1898, plankton collections have been made from time to time at the mouth of Flag Lake Slough in the hope of finding here Trochosphera, as in former years. None, however, could be found in this locality or, indeed, in any other in our field of - operations during the past summer.
As a rule, the collections made at the plankton stations above enumerated included a vertical one, one from the surface, and one from the bottom water, all made with a pump and a net of No. 20 silk bolting cloth. In addition to these a catch from a liter of water from a vertical sample at each station was made with filter paper, and from five liters with the Berkefeld filter, the first method of filtration being introduced in September, 1896, and the second in November, 1897. The total number of bottles in the regular series for the years 1897 and 1898, each representing a different catch, is 1075.
The collections above mentioned belong to the chronolog- ical series whose purpose is to afford a quantitative and qualita- tive representation of the changes through which the life in the water of the streams and the lakes examined passes during the course of a term of years. In addition to this series a con- siderable number of other catches have been made with a view to securing data upon certain allied and important phases of the plankton work.
The relation of the dissolved gases of the water to the amount and constitution of the life therein contained is an im- portant problem, and an attempt to collect data has been made in connection with the Chemical Survey of the Waters of the State. In July, 1897, Prof. A. W. Palmer, Director of this Survey, visited the Station and made a number of analyses of the oxygen dissolved in the surface and bottom waters in the lakes and river. In 1898 his visit wag repeated, with Mr. R. W. Stark, Assistant on the Survey, and a number of similar analyses were made, the carbon dioxide being also determined. A series of collections extending throughout twenty-four hours was made from the surface and bottom waters of the [Illinois
V7
tiver with a view to determining the diurnal fluctuation in the
amount of the dissolved gases. In all these operations parallel collections of the plankton have been made at the same time and from water collected in the same manner, the plankton pump being used for the collection both of the plankton and the water for gas analysis. The twenty-four-hour series col- lected in 1898 can be brought into correlation with the move- ments of the water-bloom, which is a marked feature of the plankton of the river during the warmer months of the year. About one hundred bottles are comprised in the collections belonging in this series.
The serial plankton work rests upon the supposition that a single catch made in a typical locality of a lake or river will ceive a fair sample of the microscopic life of the water, both as to its quantity and constituent organisms. With a view to testing the validity of this supposition, Thompson’s, Quiver, and Mantanzas lakes and the river have in previous years been sub- ject to extended examinations, collections being made on the same date at a considerable number of localities at regular intervals throughout the body of water examined. In 1897 Thompson’s Lake was reéxamined on this plan and a biological cross-section of the river was made at Havana. This series of collections has been increased by twenty-five bottles during the period covered by this report.
The tests looking toward the detection and correction of sources of error in the plankton method and the justification of changes in it which we have made, have been continued during the past two years. Of the collections made in these tests about one hundred and fifty have been preserved. Tests have been made of the errors resulting from leakage, from the progressive clogging of the drawn net and the consequent variable coefticient, and from the active escape of the larger organisms of the plank- ton. Several types of funnels for the in-take of the plankton pump have also been devised and tested. ‘Tests of the leakage through the silk and efforts to correct it by some form of micro- filter or precipitation method have also been continued. A variety of filters have been examined, including the Sedgwick- Rafter sand filter, using sharp Berkshire sand according to the
18
directions of Calkins*, Jackson+, and Whipple?. The loss by leakage from this filter was so great that we abandoned it and have been using filter paper as a supplementary method of collection since September, 1896, in all regular plankton examinations. For a short time ordinary filter paper was used, but owing to the looseness of its texture and consequent entangle- ment of the plankton and shedding of lint we rejected this paper and have since used the “‘ hardened filter paper,” No. 575, Schleicher & Schtll. The water from which the sample for filtration is taken has been obtained by means of the pump. It was often necessary to take a much larger amount than was used for filtration in order to secure a vertical collection. To obviate this and also to secure greater accuracy in the collection of a vertical sample, a vertical water-trap was devised, which con- sists of a light brass tube three inches in diameter and eight feet long, at whose lower end is a sliding brass gate by which the bottom of the tube can be closed after it is lowered to the desired depth.
Although the filter-paper collections served to correct the loss by leakage in an important degree, the method was defec- tive in that a small portion of the catch, varying with the amount and character of the plankton, remained on the filter paper, entangled in the fibers of its surface. To obviate this ditticulty and to secure, if possible, a method which would be effective and permit the handling of a large quantity of water, experi- ments were made with the centrifuge. The small machine described in the last report and adopted by us for use in the measurement of plankton collections was found to precipitate a large per cent. of the organisms present in the water, accord- inely a larger machine was devised and built at the Mechanical Shops of the University for this purpose (see .Plate X.) It consisted of a hollow eylinder axis of gun-metal with two return- ing arms, each bearing at the elbow a detachable receptacle which receives the solid matter precipitated from the water, which last is passed through the revolving axis and out to the
*Calkins, G. N.—The Microscopical Examination of Water. Rep. Mass. State Board of Health, 1891, pp. 396-421. 2 folding tables.
+Jackson, D. D.—An Improvement in the Sedgwick-Rafter Method for the Micro- scopical Examination of Water. Tech. Quart, Vol. ix., pp. 271—274. 1826.
+Whipple, G. C.—Experience with the Sedgwick-Rafter Method at the Biological Laboratory of the Boston Water Works. Ibid., pp. 275-279. 1896.
19
tips of the elbows before it returns to the axis for discharge at the lower end. This machine is geared to give, with power, 8,000 revolutions per minute. When fitted with cranks for two men, four to five thousand revolutions can be obtained. This apparatus was tested with water from the river at a time when it was full of water bloom,—formed principally of Carteria,— and also with water from the lakes in varying kinds and amounts of plankton. It proved to be more effective in the removal of the plankton than any method previously tried, but the opera- tion of the machine by hand was extremely laborious, and the precipitation of the plankton was very slow. Furthermore, a variable and oftentimes considerable amount of the plankton— especially that found in the water-bloom—is at times lighter than the water, and thus cannot be removed by centrifugal force with the heavier constituents.
In November, 1897, a Berkefeld army filter (system Bruckner) was added to the plankton equipment. It is very efficient in removing all the solid matter from the water, and its operation with ordinary samples is quite rapid. It consists of a foree-pump and a cylinder of diatomaceous earth, upon which the plankton and silt contained in the water are collected. This is removed by washing with a brush, but in the process a part of the substance of the cylinder is brushed off. This debris is added to the silt of the water and renders subsequent microscopic examination more difficult. The brushing is also disastrous to some of the more delicate organisms, but leaves by far the greater part of the minute forms which escape the silt intact and in suitable condition for enumeration.
During the past two years some progress has been made with an examination, measurement, and enumeration of the plankton of the regular series, though much of the time has been given to the preparation of plankton apparatus and the improvemeiit of the method. In this work the examination of the test collections by the enumeration method has been par- ticularly time-consuming. The work of enumeration has been facilitated by the use of a set of six counting machines, which enable the observer to keep a record of six different species at once without the mental effort of carrying the count in the mind. An extended amount of this work remains to be done before we
; 20
shall utilize to any considerable extent the collections now accumulated. This work will be necessary to the full confirma- tion of the results of our investigation, and will also be very valuable in suggesting new fields for development, especially along experimental lines. The present provision for this work is quite inadequate to a prompt return for our present invyest- ment in this department of the operations of the Station. The enumeration of the smaller organisms, especially under the’ higher powers of the microscope, 1s particularly taxing upon the eyes, and long-continued application is a severe strain upon the nerves of the plankton statistician. I believe it to be possible by the expenditure of a small amount of money to secure student aid for some of this work in such a way as to render promptly available a considerable portion of the now latent results of our plankton work.
The sanitary analyses of the water in connection with the Chemical Survey of the Waters of the State have been con- tinued. Weekly samples have been collected through the two years from the Illinois River and from Spoon River on days when plankton examinations have been made. Similar regular collections were commenced in Thompson’s and Quiver Lakes in September and October of 1897, and have been continued in connection with the fortnightly plankton work. The total number of samples for sanitary analyses collected at the Station and shipped to Champaign during the two years is two hundred and eighty. As these analyses include the determina- tion of the free and albuminoid ammonia, the nitrites and nitrates, the chlorine, and the oxygen consumed, they will furnish data of great value for a comparison with those derived from the plankton work.
The shipment of samples to Champaign for an analysis of the gases dissolved in the water was begun July 28, 1897, samples being sent from the surface water of the river for the determination of the oxygen. In August fortnightly surface samples from Thompson’s and Quiver lakes were added to the shipments, and in November additional samples were sent from each of these localities for an analysis of the carbon dioxide. With the beginning of 1898 samples were collected from both the surface and the bottom waters of the three localities above
21
mentioned for the determination of both the oxygen and the carbon dioxide. ‘This involves the collection and shipment of eight bottles of water from each of the three stations—a total of about nine hundred and fifty samples being shipped in 1897 and 1898. The water was collected with the plankton pump by means of a small pet cock inserted in the discharge pipe. A rubber tube is fastened upon this and inserted in the bottle and water sufficient to fill the bottle three times is pumped through it. The bottle is then closed, the sample being col- lected with a minimum contact with the air. If the change in the water between the time of collection and the time of analysis does not vitiate the results, we shall find these eas determinations of great importance in the discussion of the plankton data.
The equipment has been maintained in first-class condition so far as the wear and tear of property subject to the vicissi- tudes of an aquatic environment will permit. The hull of the laboratory boat has been provided with salt shelves and its bottom thoroughly salted to msure its preservation. The decks and guards have been painted repeatedly, and the canvas roof has received a heavy coat of paint. The floors have also been treated with several coats of oil. Three years’ experience in our floating laboratory has only increased our satisfaction with its fitness and convenience for the work of a biological station.
The steam launch, with the new equipment of machinery described in the last report, has been of great service. <A few repairs have been made from time to time upon the engine, and the boiler and stack have been provided with a shield to decrease heat in the launch. New tubes have also been placed in the boiler. In 1897 the steamer ‘‘ Josie Sivley”’ collided with the ‘“*Tllini”’ while she was at anchor on the river front, and crush- ing her against the guard of the laboratory boat opened a seam upon the larboard side and broke several ribs and a stanchion. The launch sunk in shoal water and was easily raised, the damage being subsequently thoroughly repaired. In the spring of 1897 Mr. Newberry secured an engineer’s license, and has since cared for the launch.
During the session of the Summer School the carrying capacity of the launch is severely taxed in providing transit for
the field excursions of the classes. At no time is the speed very ereat, seven miles an hour being the maximum maintained. Furthermore, the draught of the boat interferes with its greatest usefulness in the shoal waters in which at times our work com- pels us to go. It is only a question of time when extensive repairs will be necessary upon the hull. I would therefore recommend that an effort be made to secure a larger boat with more powerful machinery so as to carry more passengers and, © if necessary, to tow a barge. Greater speed and less draught can be secured with such a boat. It would also enable us to considerably extend the field of our operations. Such a launch will be a prime necessity when the work of the Station is extended to the Mississippi River.
The outfit of small boats, which consists of two lap-streak lake-boats, one lap-streak river-boat, and an Illinois River skiff, has been supplemented by the addition of a large flat-bottom seine boat twenty feet in length with five-foot beam for the plankton work. The increasing complexity of this work and the varlety of apparatus necessary for its performance has made the load required for a plankton trip too cumbersome for an ordinary boat. The total weight of the boat when manned and loaded with the outfit and water samples is not less than a thousand pounds. The increased attention given to. winter work has necessitated the adaptation of the boat to the exigencies of that season. ‘The bow and sides are protected by a sheath of zine, and while the ice prevails the bottom is shod with two steel runners. With the boat thus equipped it is usu- ally possible by rocking the boat and skillful manipulation of the ice-hooks to beat a way through the thin and rotten ice which will not carry the weight of the load, while the runners allow the boat to slide easily over the surface of the smooth ice wherever this is strong enough to bear the weight. The greatest difficulty attending transit in the field in the winter occurs at times when the river is low and access to Thompson’s Lake must be had by portage across the bottomlands at the southern end of the lake. A pair of wheels has been rigged up for this work, but in wet weather or after heavy snows they are hardly adequate to the task.
In the fall of 1896 the rented quarters which the Station
23
had occupied in town were given up, and the property there accumulated was placed on board the laboratory boat. When the Station was opened the following summer it was necessary to secure storage elsewhere for property of a bulky nature or that for which there was only occasional use, and by the cour- tesy of the Ilhnois State Fish Commission we utilized a corner of their warehouse on the river front until the burning of the building in September. We suffered no loss of consequence, and our property, some of it in a damaged condition, was then returned to the laboratory boat for the winter. In 1898 the problem of storage was temporarily solved by the purchase of a cheaply constructed cabin boat twelve by twenty feet.
Although no formal opening of the Station to students was made during the summer of 1897 and no advertisements of its facilities was undertaken, a few applicants for places were ac- commodated under the conditions attending the opening of the Station to such persons in previous years. The following is a hist of those in attendance and the lines of work pursued.
H. C. Beardslee, A. B., Instructor in Science, University School, Cleveland, Ohio. Fleshy fungi and Mycetozoa.
Miss Bertha V. H. Forbes, B. S., Teacher of Biology, High School, Austin, Ill. General biology.
H. M. Kelly, A. M., Professor of Biology, Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, lowa. Trematoda parasitic in Unionide.
S. D. Magers, B.S., Principal of High School, Houston, Texas. Alow and general biology.
H. L. Roberts, Superintendent of Schools and Principal of High School, Farmington, Ill. General biology.
The following year a Summer School of Biology, with regu- lar courses in botany and zoélogy and offerings of advanced work in zodlogy was planned, and authorized at the March meet- ing of. the Board of Trustees. The school was well advertised in the educational journals, and preliminary and final circulars were distributed as far as possible among the teachers of the State. Extended advertising in the neighboring states was not attempted. The Station staff was mainly responsible for pack- ing and shipping the equipment sent over by the University and the State Laboratory and for its return, for the registration of students, and for the financial management of the school. No
24
effort was spared to make the equipment of the Station of use to the school. The Board of Education of Havana placed the High School Building at our disposal for the Summer School, and the Teachers’ Institute in session during the opening days was transferred to one of the churches by the County Superin- tendent, Mr. M. Bolan.
The following is a list of the persons in attendance and . their present positions,
Miss Anna L. Baldwin, Science Teacher, High School, Pittsfield, Ill.
T. L. Cook, Superintendent of Schools, Mt. Pulaski, Ill.
Wallace Craig, B. 8., Assistant of the Illinois State Labora- tory of Natural History, Havana, Ill.
Miss Louise 8S. Dewey, B. S., Fellow in Physiology, Univer- sity of Illinois, Urbana, Ill.
C. C. Faust, Superintendent of Schools, Mansfield, Il.
J. I’. Garber, A. B., Instructor in Biology and Mathematics, High School, Houston, Texas.
J.T.Johnson,Teacher of Biology, High School, Galesburg, II.
Miss Nellie I. Kofoid, B. S., Science Teacher, High School, De Kalb, Ill.
J. EH. Meharry, Student, University of Illinois, Tolono, Ill.
Mrs. Sara E. Pierce, Principal of High School, Havana, Ill.
W. E. Praeger, Student, University of Illinois, Keokuk, Ia.
L. H. Pratt, Teacher, Clear Creek, Ill.
F. W. Schacht, M. 8., Principal of High School, Chicago Heights, Ill.
Otto Widmann, Student, University of Illinois, Old Orchard, Mo.
C. W. Young, B.§S., Assistant in Botany, University of [llinois, Urbana, Ill.
The total number enrolled in the School was fifteen. Of these nine are teachers of natural science in this and other states. Three of those in attendance are now connected with the University as assistants or fellows. Nine of the fifteen students of the School have been or are connected with the University, three are now undergraduates, and six have received their diplomas, two of them remaining as graduate students. This Summer School of Biology might be made a very efticient
means of attracting attention to the facilities which the Univer- sity offers for instruction in thé sciences, since students availing themselves of the opportunities of the Summer School are apt to be drawn to the University for further work.
Although the number in attendance was not so large as had been expected, still certain features of the enterprise are encouraging. Among these is the cordial response of the citizens of Havana to those needs of the School which can be supplied only by local support. There was no difficulty in securing pleasant and comfortable accommodations for all in attendance ; anda much larger number would not have exhausted the facilities offered. From its beginning the Station has received generous treatment at the hands of the business men of the town. Indeed, the granting of a site for a Station build- ing upon the public river front on the bluff overlooking the river has been urged in the local press. A second encouraging feature is the satisfaction expressed by those in attendance with the work they have been able to accomplish in Havana, and the frequently repeated desire to continue it when oppor- tunity offers.
Very respectfully yours, C. A. Koror, Superintendent of Biological Station.
REPORT ON WATER ANALYSES.
To the Director of the Laboratory.
Sir: During the two years just passed the number of water samples, from the streams and lakes in the vicinity of Havana, Illinois, which were examined by the State Water Sur- vey as conducted by the department of Chemistry of the Uni- versity, were as follows: Illinois River and Spoon River 102 samples from each, these being regular weekly collections from each of these sources. The collections from Quiver Lake number, all told, 28, and a like number has been taken from Thomp- son’s Lake. The waters from these different sources have been subjected to the regular sanitary analysis and there has been in the different seasons of the year considerable variation in the quantities of organic matters contained, but it is to be noted that
26
the quantities of organic matters in the water of the Llinois River and in the lakes adjacent thereto are ordinarily very high even for surface waters. During the last twelve months the average in the river and also in the lakes shows that the quantity of sewage contained has been considerably less than it was during the preceding twelve months, due of course to the fact that there have been repeated periods of high water and a more generally distributed rainfall during the year of “97—98 than was the case during ’?96—’97.
Attempts have also been made during the Jast year to deter- mine the quantity of dissolved oxygen and of dissolved or free carbonic acid gas in the waters of the [Illinois River and the lakes at Havana. We have met with considerable difficulty in making these determinations because of the necessity of doing most of the work here at Champaign. The conditions are particularly unfavorable for work at a distance because of the large quantities of organic matters contained in the water, and, further, because these matters are in a state of putrefactive change, that is, are undergoing somewhat rapid decomposition. The determinations of dissolved oxygen, consequently, commonly cive us figures somewhat too low. Tests made on the spot at the time of collection show that the quantity of dissolved oxygen is ordinarily diminished very quickly on standing a few hours, particularly when the vessels contaiming the water are exposed to the light. Our results, however, have been obtained under practically similar conditions throughout the season and they show considerable variation, at times the quantity of dissolved oxygen being exceedingly low, while at other times the quantity reached the approximate maximum figure. This is true not only of water contained in the river, but also of the water of the lakes. The data which we have in hand has not yet been digested and cannot be until the work has been earried on somewhat more extensively. The free carbonic acid,—that is the carbonic acid which exists not in combination with the bases in the water, but as gas merely dissolved in the water— varies yet more greatly than does the dissolved oxygen. At times there seems to be none present; at other times the quantity present is quite considerable; but these determinations are even more greatly influenced by permitting the samples to
stand, or by the time which elapses during their transportation to the laboratory, and we cannot at present attach very great importance to the results which have hitherto been obtained.
We expect soon to be able to extract gases from water by means of an air pump and then we shall be in a position to ob- tain results which will not be influenced by the conditions men- tioned above, and, provided we shall be able to have collections earefully made at Havana, the work can very easily be con- tinued and completed here at the University.
Since early in the summer of 1897 we have made regular determinations of dissolved oxygen and of carbon dioxide in samples taken from the Illinois River and from Thompson and (Juiver lakes, but the earlier results are less reliable than those obtained during the last six months, and these later results are themselves not sufficiently reliable to be made at present the basis of any general conclusions.
Yours very respectfully, ArtrHuR W. PALMER, Professor of Chemistry.
REPORT OF THE ENTOMOLOGICAL ASSISTANT.
To the Director of the Laboratory.
Sir: During the season of 1897 I was in the field, prima- rily for entomological observation and collection, from June 29 to August 13, giving attention particularly to the gathering of information and material for use in completing our work on Odonata and Mollusca. In 1898 two visits to the field were made for work on Odonata, Ephemerida, and Mollusca; a week in spring, from April 19 to 25, and two weeks in midsummer, from June 21 to July 7.
The accumulations of material and notes were already sufficiently large for group studies at the beginning of the two- year period covered by this report. Every opportunity has been taken to make desirable additions to them, and they now stand as a superb basis for the study of any group of aquatic forms. The material is all arranged by orders, and consists of about 4,250 vials and bottles of specimens.
There are now in various stages of preparation four papers,
i 2%
mainly on the entomology of the Biological Station field, one each on the Odonata, the Ephemerida, the fresh-water Mollusca, and the aquatic Coleoptera. The order of procedure which I have endeavored to pursue in the preparation of these papers, and which seems to lead to the most satisfactory and accurate results, is as follows: First, the collection of a large quantity of material and data under the greatest possible variety of con- ditions as to locality, surroundings, stage of water, season and time of day; then the careful study of these, in connection with the literature, and the making of copious notes and sketches preliminary to the preparation of manuscript, all evident deficiencies either in material or data being carefully noted down; next, a return to the field at the times and places indi- cated by the previous collections for the special purpose of supplying, as far as possible, these deficiencies, and finally, after further study of the literature, the writing of the manu- script.
In the preparation of the paper on the Odonata Il have had the valued assistance of Prof. J. G. Needham and Mr. C. C. Adams, who have furnished the systematic work on the nymplis and adults respectively, while it has been my part to discuss the biology and cecology of the group and of its species and to combine the several manuscripts into a single paper— now nearly ready for the press. Under Mr. Adams’s supervision the State Laboratory Artist, Miss Hart, has prepared a valuable series of 134 drawings illustrating the abdominal structures of nearly all our Illinois species, and a series of general drawings of the nymphs and their distinguishing structures is well under way.
For the article on the Ephemerida, the Station collections and notes have all been examined and the results are nearly ready to be put into manuscript form, It would add greatly to the usefulness of the paper, however, if a study of the large series of nymphs of this order in the general collections of the. State Laboratory could be made before the article is completed.
Much time and labor have been spent on the Wollusca in the endeavor to place the study of this group on a truly scientific basis. Not merely the shell, but all parts of the animal were studied, full use being made of the unusual facilities at the
248)
Station for work of this kind. The univalves of the Station collection have been determined by Mr. H. A. Pilsbry, of the University of Pennsylvania, and the Spheriwm and Pisidiwn by Dr. V. Sterki. More time could profitably be spent on the biology of the Unionide, but otherwise the notes are ready to 20 into manuscript form.
The collections of water beetles have been exhaustively studied and determined, but the systematic examination of the immature stages has not yet been reached.
Respectfully submitted, C. A. Hart,
Entomological Assistant.
REPORT ON THE SUMMER SCHOOL OF 1898. To the Director of the Laboratory.
Str: Of the fifteen persons in regular attendance at the Summer School twelve were either teachers, or preparing to teach, in our public schools. Five of them had received train- ing in the laboratories of the University of Illinois, but nearly all of them were without any considerable experience in field- work or in the methods of collecting and preserving aquatic organisms. On this account especial prominence was given to tri-weekly excursions for collecting and field observation, and these furnished probably the most important elements in the work of the session. With the steam launch, row boats, and needful collecting equipment of the Biological Station the entire party made trips to Matanzas, Thompson’s, and other lakes within reach of Havana. The use of the Station launch made the excursions highly enjoyable, and by reducing to a minimum the time en route gave the party ample opportunity for obsery- ing, collecting, and preserving such animals and plants as would best repay further study, or would be useful in the taboratories or museums of the high schools in which the various teachers present were interested. The work done in the labora- tory by the several members of the School was largely determined by their past experience and the application to be made of the knowledge acquired,
Soon after the opening of the session it became evident that the needs of the students would be best met by dividing their
30
time equally between zodlogy and botany; the forenoons were accordingly given to the former, and the afternoons to the latter.
In the department of zodlogy emphasis was given to the lines of work most useful to teachers. Material collected on excursions Was used in various ways. For correct methods of dissection as well as a better knowledge of anatomical details some work in dissection was done. Time was also given to acquiring the best methods of preserving specimens of various ” kinds of animals, as Hydra, worms of various groups, mollusks, Crustacea, msects,—both larval and mature,—and fishes. The identification of annelid worms, insects, mollusks, and fishes received due attention, and was aided by named collections be- longing to the State Laboratory, and also by literature and by a number of synoptic keys to these groups prepared by members of the State Laboratory staff, As a result of this part of the work, teachers were enabled to take home with them properly preserved and named collections of various kinds of animals. All persons not already familiar with the ordinary methods of section-cutting and the making of permanent microscopic prep- arations had practice in such work.
The work in botany consisted of as thorough a study of the aquatic and terrestrial flora of the surrounding region as the time would allow. The alge of the Illinois River and connected waters were studied with special reference to their morphology and reproduction. The relation between land and water plants both as to their differences in morphology and distribution was observed and discussed on the field trips.
The phanerogams of the vicinity were treated with special reference to their adaptation for protection and cross-fertiliza- tion. Instruction in the methods of the collection and preser- vation of herbarium material was given to those who desired it. The systematic work on the higher plants was in the nature of a study of the characteristics of orders from different representa- tives rather than by following an artificial key.
General plant physiology was illustrated by demonstrations with apparatus such as can be employed in laboratories of limited equipment. In the field special attention was paid to the movements of plant parts as influenced by light, tempera- ture, and progress in seed-development. Time at the end of the
31
month was devoted to a discussion of the matter presented and its adaptation to the needs of the secondary schools, with which most of those present were connected.
Each student was provided with a first-class compound microscope for use in both botany and zoélogy, and had also the use of a microtome and an abundance of apparatus, reagents, and general laboratory equipment from the zodlogical, botanical, and entomological laboratories of the University. An abundance of literature for general reading as well as for work on special groups was provided from the libraries of the Uni- versity and the State Laboratory.
The instruction in field and laboratory was supplemented by lectures on special forms and groups of animals, and by others, of general biological interest, on cell division, develop- ment, parasitism, cross-fertilization of plants, adaptive modifi- cations for protection, ete.
Very respectfully yours, FRANK SMITH, Assistant Professor of Zoology.
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