FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 1/9 



food for them by artificial means. The black bass, the bull head and tne sun fish 

 deposit their spawn and watch over it until it is hatched ; when the young brood 

 rises, the parent fish, in the case of the black bass and the sun fish it is the male, 

 guards and watches over the brood, driving ofT all intruders that threaten destruction 

 to the young. The watchful parent bass that fights valiantly to protect its young 

 may in the end turn upon the brood and swallow all that are not quick enough to 

 escape. Like all spring spawning fishes the black bass spawns in a rising temperature, 

 and not until the water is about sixty-five or si.xty-six degrees Fahrenheit for a con- 

 siderable part of the day will the black bass prepare spawning beds. This refers to 

 conditions existing in this State, and the temperature given is similar to the tempera- 

 ture at which black bass spawn in Michigan, as has been determined by close obser- 

 vation in a series of experiments, but I understand that in more southern States black 

 bass will spawn where the water is a few degrees colder.* After the spawning beds 

 are prepared, if there is a lowering of the temperature of the water, the bass will 

 abandon the beds and not return to them until the water again rises to about the 

 figures given. Observation shows that bass after preparing their beds have abandoned 

 them for two weeks because of a lowering of the temperature of the water. It is for 

 this reason that the Fisheries, Game and F"orests Commission has advocated a close 

 season extending through the month of June, instead of to the 15th of June, as at 

 present. 



If black bass are to be preserved in this State, the close season must be 

 made to cover their breeding season, for black bass cannot be hatched artificially like 

 the trout, salmon, white fish, shad, pike-perch, codfish, smelt, tomcod, etc., etc. It is 

 not necessary for the purposes of this paper to explain in detail why the black bass 

 cannot be treated as other fish named are treated in the State hatching stations, but 

 the impregnated ova of the black bass cannot be obtained for hatching. Nature seems 

 to forbid it; and, although man has tried repeatedly to overcome nature's scruples in 

 this respect, he has not succeeded, and probably never will succeed. When nature 

 elected that the black bass should have different spawning habits from any other of 

 the so-called game fishes, she apparently put the seal of disapproval upon the opera- 

 tion of taking the eggs by hand ; at the same time she provided that natural impreg- 

 nation of black bass eggs should reach to nearly as high a percentage as man had 

 been able to secure by artificial means with other species of fish. In the cold waters 

 of this State black bass mature slowly, but in warmer water of more southern States 

 black bass spawn the season following that in which they are born. It requires a 



* While this report was passing through the press I was told by Mr. W. de C. Ravenel, of the 

 United States Fish Commission, of one instance where black bass were known to spawn with the 

 water less than 60" Fahr. 



