27 



a piscivorous fish — indeed, not so much so as the brook 

 trout, which has stronger, sharper, and more unequal teeth. 

 The principal food of the black bass is crawfish, as the 

 shrimp, squid, and crab, is of the striped bass, though 

 neither fish will object to a minnow, if it can catch it, when 

 hungry. The minnow is a good bait for the black bass, as 

 the menhaden is for the strij)ed bass, but it must not be 

 surmised from this fact that they are piscivorous in their 

 habits. 



A minnow on a hook is in a disabled condition and can- 

 not escape, and most fishes will take it under these con- 

 ditions, whereas if it was free it would easily get away. 

 Fishes have been found in the stomach of sturgeons, but 

 that is no indication that it is piscivorous, which it could 

 not be with its toothless jaws and sucker-like mouth en- 

 tirely below the projecting snout ; but finding a disabled 

 or dead fish on the bottom, it swallows it. So, whenever 

 the black bass, striped bass, white perch, or the cat- 

 tislies, or any fish with brush-like teeth, finds a disabled 

 fish of suitable size, on a hook or otherwise, it is taken in. 

 I have demonstrated this fact time and again by dropping 

 a hook baited with a minnow in the midst of a school of 

 similar fishes, when it would be singled out and seized by 

 a larger fish wiiich had failed to notice those that were 

 free. 



I cannot refrain from saying, in this connection, that the 

 black bass has been greatly misrepresented and unjustly 

 maligned and grossly abused as a piscivorous fish, and oft- 

 en by those who ought to have known better. It has been 

 accused of depopulating rivers of young shad that have 

 been planted in them, while the striped bass of the same 

 waters have escaped such imputation. It has been charged 

 with tjie destruction of brook trout in certain waters, while 

 the cat-fishes have not had a word raised against them. But 

 happily the charges have been iDroven false, and the black 

 bass has been acknowledged to be not so black as it has 



