CHAPTER XX. 



THE BLACK BASS AS A GAME FISH. 



" He is a flsh that lurks close all winter ; but is very pleasant and jolly after 

 mid-April, and iu May, and in the hot mouths."— Izaak Walton. 



Those who have tasted the lotus of Salmon, or Trout 

 fishing, in that Utopian clime of far away — while reveling 

 in its aesthetic atmosphere, and surrounded by a misty halo 

 of spray from the waterfall, or enveloped by the filmy 

 gauze and iridescent haze of the cascade — have inscribed 

 tomes, sang idyls, chanted pseans, and poured out libations 

 in honor and praise of the silver-spangled Salmon, or the 

 ruby-studded Trout, while it is left to the vulgar horde of 

 Black Bass anglers to stand upon the mountain of their 

 own., doubt and presum])t.ion, and, with uplifted hands, 

 in admiration and awe, gaze with dazed eyes from afar 

 upon that forbidden land — that terra incognita — and then, 

 having lived in vain, die and leave no sign. 



It is, then, with a spirit of rank heresy in my heart ; 

 with smoked glass spectacles on my nose, to dim the glare 

 and glamour of the transcendent shore ; with the scales of 

 justice across my shoulder — M. salinoidcs in one scoop and 

 M. dolomieu in the other — I pass the barriers and confines 

 of the enchanted land, and toss them into a stream that 

 has been depopulated of even fingerlings, by the dilettanti 

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