GENERAL AND SPECIFIC FEATURES. 143 



specific names, and not by their odors. It is just as easy 

 to write the distinctive name "Black Bass" as the general 

 name " Bass." 



Bass is a very vague term at best, meaning one thing in 

 one part of the country, and a totally different thing in 

 another. Along the eastern coast it means a Striped Bass 

 {Eoccus lineatus), or a Sea Bass (Chitropristes atrarins) ; in 

 Florida it means a Channel Bass {Sckoiops ocellatus) ; in 

 the west it may be either a Black Bass {MicrojAerus), a 

 Rock Bass {Ambhplites rvjjestris), a White Bass (Eocciis 

 chrysops), or a Calico Bass (Fomoxys nigromaculatus) ; 

 while in Otsego County, New York, it means an Otsego 

 Bass {Coregonus civ pe if or mis var. otsego), which is not a 

 Bass at all but a Avhite fish. 



Then, again, some of these correspondents write of the 

 real Black Bass, meaning usually 31. dolomieu, the small- 

 mouthed species, seeming to imply that the other species is 

 not real, or at least is not the Black Bass, but something 

 else — a kind of pseudo variety. Others in writing of the 

 large-mouthed species, 31. sahnoides — owing to its former 

 name, 31. nigricans — have called it the real Black Bass, 

 under the impression that as it was named nigricans — i. e., 

 black — the other species must be some other color, and 

 could not be the simon-pure article. Now, one species is 

 not more real than the other; the small-mouthed Bass is 

 regarded as the type species because it was the first to be 

 described by a naturalist, and given a specific and generic 

 name. j 



The term ''Black Bass," then, is distinctive, and should 

 always be used when alluding to the genus generally. 

 The different species should be mentioned as the small- 

 mouthed Black Bass or the large-mouthed Black Bass, as 



