214 The Life Story of the Fish 



pounds. They eat herring, sand-launce, menhaden, crusta- 

 ceans, mussels, and small fish. 



Males reach maturity in the second or third year, females 

 in the fourth or fifth, and they spawn annually thereafter. 

 They do not give up feeding during the spawning period, 

 so that growth is not interrupted at this season, and the 

 scales show no spawning-mark. The number of eggs is large: 

 about one million for a ten-pound female, ten million for a 

 seventy-five pounder. Males are smaller than females of 

 the same age, and this is a fact which holds true for many of 

 the bony fishes. Males are often smaller and brighter-colored 

 than their consorts. 



BLACK BASS 



The black bass is a typically American fish. He belongs 

 to a family native only to North America, the Centrarchidaey 

 which includes also the crappies and the sunfishes. His char- 

 acter embodies traits which we like to think of as typically 

 American: adaptability, gameness, individuality. And one of 

 his first appearances in history is also typically American: it 

 consisted of a journey in the water-tank of a locomotive. 



The black bass was originally confined to the Saint 

 Lawrence and Mississippi basins, and to the South Atlantic 

 states and the territory near the Mexican border. He was 

 not to be found in the New England and Middle Atlantic 

 states, and in the days of slow travel it was impossible to 

 transport him. At that time there lived a gentleman named 

 William Shriver who could not get over the fact that a care- 

 less god had done everything imaginable to make the Poto- 

 mac a paradise for black bass, and had then neglected to put 

 any of the species in that body of water. When the Baltimore 

 & Ohio Railroad was completed across the AUeghenies, the 

 event had one significance to Mr. Shriver: man had pro- 

 vided the link which nature had omitted. He procured a 

 large bucket, punched it full of holes, filled it with bass, 



