THE PERCHES 



pares favorably with the yellow perch and the sun- 

 fish in fighting qualities. It is commonly called 

 the log perch or rockfish, but is endowed with 

 other and less euphonious names, such as hog molly 

 and hog fish, which are somewhat of an insult to its 

 panoply of rich green and black, hoglike as may be 

 the shape of its snout. They are very numerous from 

 the Great Lakes to Quebec in swift, gravelly-bot- 

 tomed streams of some depths, but are never found in 

 small brooks, and may be recognized by the fifteen, 

 slightly more or less, dark transverse bars or bands 

 running from the back to the belly, these usually 

 alternating with fainter ones that reach only to the 

 median line ; a black spot is always present at the 

 base of the tail fin, and the other fins are darkly 

 barred. The scientific classification is Percina cap- 

 rodes, percina being the diminutive of perca, " a 

 perch," and the specific from two Greek words 

 which mean literally, " pig " and "resemblance," 

 which refer to its comparatively long snout. 



