212 The Lije Story of the Fish 



esteem as a game fish. Tampering with nature often has 

 unhappy results. The English sparrow imported to this 

 country to combat caterpillars, the rabbit taken to Australia 

 to provide food, have turned into intolerable nuisances. But 

 unless the striped bass's occasional habit of eating young 

 steelhead and salmon turns out to be a real boomerang, it 

 can be said that its introduction to California has brought 

 only happiness to all concerned, and the same thing is true 

 of the shad, which was shipped west at about the same time, 

 and which is now more abundant there than in its native 

 waters in the east. These two immigrants furnish food and 

 recreation which would not otherwise exist, and, with the 

 above-mentioned reservation, the men who conceived and 

 brought about their importation may be looked upon as 

 benefactors of humanity. 



The striped bass is a typical modern fish with all the 

 advanced features. Its ventral fins are located under the 

 pectorals, its dorsal is double with the forward part sup- 

 ported by stiff spines and the after part by soft rays, its scales 

 are ctenoid, its premaxillary bone forms the upper lip to 

 the exclusion of the maxillary, and its air-bladder has lost 

 its connection with the gullet. It belongs to the Serramdae^ 

 and is therefore more closely related to the sea-bass and 

 the grouper than to the large- and small-mouth black bass, 

 which are members of another family. 



Its natural history is fairly well known. It spawns between 

 the months of March and July, when temperatures range 

 between 6o and 75 degrees. It may spawn in brackish water, 

 as has been reported, but certainly much more often in 

 fresh. It chooses channels where there is a definite current — 

 sometimes not great, but sometimes very considerable. One 

 of its best-known spawning grounds on the Atlantic coast is 

 in the fast-flowing, rock-strewn rapids of the Roanoke River. 

 On the Pacific coast it spawns in the comparatively slow- 



