BOOK OF THE BLACK BASS. 



CHAPTER I. 



SCIENTIFIC HISTORY OF THE BLACK BASS. 



(MiCROPTERUS.) 



" For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, to 

 foreign nations, and to the next ages."— Bacon. 



The scientific history of the Bhick Bass is a most unsat- 

 isfactory one. This is owing to a train of accidental cir- 

 cumstances, and to the neglect of thorough investigation 

 of its earliest history, as recorded by Lacepede, the re- 

 nowned French naturalist, in his great work, "Histoiro 

 Naturelle des Poissons."* 



It will be well, perhaps, before entering upon the minu- 

 tiae of the subject, to present a brief synopsis of the scien- 



* "The great work on the natural history of fish, by the Count Lace- 

 pede, was the next publication after that of Bloch upon general Ichthy- 

 ology. . . . It is not, like others in different branches of Zoology, a 

 servile copy of the Linnsean divisions, but numerous others are defined 

 for the first time: and when we look back to what systematic ichthyology 

 was before, and what it became by the labors of Lacepede, no one can 

 in fairness deny but that a great and important advance in this science 

 had been efTected. No naturalist can hope to achieve more than this, 

 however great may be his abilities ; and we do not, therefore, understand 

 upon what ground so much censure has recently been cast upon the 

 works of this distinguished Frenchman by some of his own country- 

 men." — SwAiNSON, Not. Hist, and Qass. of Fishes, I., 58, 1838. 



(11) 



