32 BOOK OF THE lU.ACK BASS. 



imposed upon it (unless, as Ix' fore, it be for one reason or another 

 ineligible), and the proper name of any species must be made by 

 combining the above-mentioned specific and generic names. 



This is the law on the subject, and, as elsewhere, the law is usually, 

 though not always, simply right. We accept many meaningless or 

 even objectioimble names to avoid the confusion attendant upon 

 arbitrary changes. Were it not for these rules science would ever 

 suffer, as it has much suffered in the past, from the eiforts of the 

 improvers of nomenclature — men who invent new names for old 

 objects for tiie purpose of seeing their own personal designations: 

 Smith, Jones, Brehm, Eeichenow, or what not, after them. In the 

 words of "a right Sagamann," John Cassin: "There is not, evi- 

 dently, any other course consistent with justice and the plainest 

 principles of right and morality, and, in fact, no alternative, unless, 

 indeed, an operator is disposed to set himself up for the first of all 

 history, as is said of an early Chinese emperor. The latter course, 

 in a degree, singular as it may appenr, is not entirely unknown to 

 naturalists, especially to those who regard science as a milch cow 

 rather than as a transcendent goddess, a distinction in classification 

 fir.st made by the great poet Schiller." 



Now, as to the names of our s|)ecies of bass, I take it for granted 

 that the reader knows (o) what a Black Bass is and what it is not (6); 

 that there are two species of Black Bass, the large-mouthed and the 

 small-mouthod, the latter being with most anglers the Black Bass par 

 excellence, the other the off horse, and (c) what the difference between 

 them is. In any event you will find it all written in Professor Gill's 

 most excellent paper, " On the Species of the Genus Mirroptcrus,'^ 

 in the "Proceedings of the American Association fur the Advance- 

 ment of Science in 1873." 



The earliest published notice of a Black Bass with a scientific name 

 was of one of the small-mouthed kind, sent to Laceptde from South 

 Carolina. This specimen bore with it the name of " trout," after 

 the abominable, contemptible, pernicious and otherwise detestable 

 custom of our erring Southern brethren of calling a Black Bass in 

 tlie river, or a weak fish in the sea, a "tront." Now, we may pre- 

 sume that the great French naturalist was inizzled by this mime, 

 and put on his spectacles to sec wlial in tlic worhl (■(.uld be " trout- 

 like" about such a fish, with its coarse scales and spinous lins. To 



