72 



THE SMALL-MOUTHED BASS 



the following year are small, but readily visible to the naked 

 eye. They grow gradually until it is time for them to be 

 laid. Whether they grow more rapidly during one part of 

 the year than at other times is, so far as I know, undeter- 

 mined. The ovi-sacs increase in size with the growth of the 

 eggs of the year, but they are always of good size in a two- 

 pound bass, about the bulk of one's little finger when they 

 are smallest. All the eggs that the fish will ever lay are 

 probably present in them when the fish becomes sexually 

 mature; but most of them are then, of course, of microscopic 

 size." 



