align="left">Adequate

Elk County:     Moline Inadequate     Howard Adequate Sumner County:     Belle Plaine Discharging raw sewage Adequate plant under construction.     Mulvane Discharging raw sewage Adequate plant under construction.     Oxford Discharging raw sewage Construction on adequate plant to start soon. Butler County:     Augusta Adequate     El Dorado Discharging raw sewage Adequate plant under construction.     Douglass Discharging raw sewage Adequate plant to go into operation within 30 days.

Pollution by petroleum wastes from refineries has also affected the streams studied. The only refinery within the area is at Arkansas City. In Butler County there are four refineries on the Walnut watershed upstream from the area surveyed. Metzler (1952) noted that "fish-kills" occurred from the mid-1940's until 1952 in connection with wastes periodically discharged from these refineries. However, the largest kill, in 1944, was attributed to excessive brine pollution.

In Arkansas City a meat-packing plant, a large railroad workshop, two flour mills, two milk plants, and several small manufacturing plants contribute wastes which may figure in industrial pollution. There are milk plants and small poultry processing plants at Winfield. In Chautauqua and Elk Counties there is little industrial activity.

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CONSERVATION

In recent years several measures have been implemented or proposed to conserve the water and land resources of the Arkansas River Basin. Droughts and floods have focused public attention on such conservation. Less spectacular, but nevertheless important, problems confronting conservationists include streambank erosion, channel deterioration, silting, recreational demands for water, and irrigation needs.

Congress has authorized the U. S. Corps of Engineers (by the Flood Control Act of 1941) to construct six dam and reservoir projects in the Verdigris watershed. Two of these—Hulah Reservoir in Osage County, Oklahoma, on Big Caney River, and Fall River Reservoir in Greenwood County, Kansas—have been completed. Other reservoirs authorized in the Verdigris watershed include Toronto, Neodesha, and Elk City (Table Mound) in Kansas and Oologah in Oklahoma. Construction is underway on the Toronto Reservoir and some planning has been accomplished on the Neodesha and Elk City projects.

The possibilities of irrigation projects in the Verdigris and Walnut River basins are under investigation by the United States Bureau of Reclamation (Foley, et al., 1955:F18).

An area of 11 square miles in Chautauqua and Montgomery Counties is included in the Aiken Creek "Pilot Watershed Project," a co-operative effort by federal, state, and local agencies to obtain information as to the effects of an integrated watershed protection program (Foley, et al., 1955:131).

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PREVIOUS ICHTHYOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS

Few accounts of fishes in the area here reported on have been published. Evermann and Fordice (1886:184) made a collection from Timber Creek at Winfield in 1884.

The State Biological Survey collected actively from 1910 to 1912, but localities visited in the Arkansas River System were limited to the Neosho and Verdigris River basins (Breukelman, 1940:377). The only collection made in the area considered here was on the Elk River in Elk County on July 11, 1912. The total species list of this collection is not known.

In the years 1924-1929 Minna E. Jewell collected at various places in central Kansas. On June 30, 1925, Jewell and Frank Jobes made collections on Timber Creek and Silver Creek in Cowley County.

Hoyle (1936:285) mentions collections made by himself and Dr. Charles E. Burt, who was then Professor of Biology at Southwestern College, Winfield, Kansas. Records in the Department of Biology, Kansas State Teachers College at Emporia, indicate that Dr. Burt and others made collections in the area which have not been published on.

Table 4.—Collections Made by Dr. Frank B. Cross of the State Biological Survey in 1955.

Claire Schelske (1957) studied fishes of the Fall and Verdigris Rivers in Wilson and Montgomery counties from March, 1954, to February, 1955.

In the annotated list of species that follows, records other than mine are designated by the following symbols:

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Professor Frank B. Cross for his interest in my investigation, for his counsel, and for his penetrating criticism of this paper. This study would have been impossible without the assistance of several persons who helped in the field. Mr. Artie C. Metcalf and Mr. Delbert Metcalf deserve special thanks for their enthusiastic and untiring co-operation in collecting and preserving of specimens. Mrs. Artie C. Metcalf, Miss Patricia Metcalf, Mr. Chester Metcalf, and Mr. Forrest W. Metcalf gave help which is much appreciated. I am indebted to the following persons for numerous valuable suggestions: Dr. John Breukelman, Kansas State Teachers College, Emporia, Kansas; Dr. George Moore, Oklahoma A&M College, and Mr. W. L. Minckley, Lawrence, Kansas.

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MATERIALS AND METHODS

Collections were made by means of: (1) a four-foot net of nylon screen; (2) a 10×4-foot "common-sense" woven seine with ¼-inch mesh; (3) a 15×4-foot knotted mesh seine; (4) a 20×5-foot ¼-inch mesh seine; (5) pole and line (natural and artificial baits). At most stations the four-foot, ten-foot, and twenty-foot seines were used; however, the equipment that was used varied according to the size of pool, number of obstructions, nature of bottom, amount of flow, and type of streambank. Usually several hours were spent at each station and several stations were revisited from time to time. Percentages noted in the List of Species represent the relative number taken in the first five seine-hauls at each station.

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