210 AMERICAN FISH CULTURE. 



voraciousness. It destroys almost everything before it, 

 except the perch, and even kills out pickerel by devouring 

 the young. But in ponds already infested with pickerel 

 and abounding in ' shiners/ it may be introduced with 

 much profit, because it replaces bad fish by good. It 

 should be carefully excluded, however, from all waters that 

 contain trout, white fish or other valuable species, and from 

 ponds communicating with such waters, for it is a most 

 restless and pushing robber, eagerly searching and follow- 

 ing the inlets and outlets of its pond. Of this propensity 

 the Brookline reservoir gives the most curious instance. 

 Nine black bass of 2j to 3 pounds were put there in July^ 

 1862. Since then, in the examination of the water-pipes 

 leading from this reservoir to Long Pond, these fishes have 

 been found in considerable numbers and of large size ; and, 

 moreover, either by their young or their eggs, they have 

 penetrated the screen at the mouth of the pipe itself!* 

 So these black bass, apparently impelled by no other feel- 

 ing than that of restlessness, performed an underground 

 journey of fifteen miles, in a brick aqueduct whose greatest 

 diameter was six feet !" "f 



How easy it would be to introduce these bass into ponds 

 where pike have exterminated the more valuable trout, or 



* Communication from Mr. John H. Thorndike, President of the 

 Water Board. 



f Arrangements have been made with Mr. Tisdale to stock 

 several other ponds, and the work is already hegun. The best time 

 to move the live fish is in the cool weather of late autumn or of 

 early spring. 



