GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 159 



was supplied with fresh water at the regiihir water stations 

 along the line of the road, and thereby sueeeeded well in 

 keeping the fish (which were young and small, having 

 been selected for the purpose) alive, fresh, and sound. 



"This lot of fish, as well as every subsequent one, on 

 my arrival at Cumberland, were put into the basin of the 

 Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, from which they had free egress 

 and ingress to the Potomac River and its tributaries, both 

 above and below the dam. * * * " 



General Shriver also states in a subsequent letter to Dr. 

 Asa Wall, of Winchester, Virginia, dated September 17, 

 1867 :— 



" The number of these Black Bass taken to the Potomac 

 River by me, as well as I can now recollect, was about 

 thirty. * * *" 



Mr. Edward Stabler, a Avell-known and reliable gentle- 

 man of Baltimore, in a letter to G. T. Hopkins, of the 

 Board of Water Commissioners of Baltimore City, dated, 

 "Baltimore, 10th Mo., 28, '65," and published in the 

 Baltimore Sun during the same month, says : — 



"After much delay and frequent disappointments and 

 loss, from the lack of suitable transportation, I have suc- 

 ceeded in taking in the Upper Potomac, and safely trans- 

 porting to Baltimore, a fine lot of 'Black Bass' {Orystes 

 nigricans Agassiz), with which to stock 'Swan Lake,' and 

 also those in Druid Hill Park. 



"As a brief history of the introduction of this superior 

 fish into the tributaries of the Chesapeake, and east of 

 the Alleghanies — for they are, in my opinion, before the 

 Trout, both for sport and the table — may net be without 

 interest to some, it may be stated that some thirteen years 

 since, my son, A. G. Stabler, then a conductor on the 



