MAY 107 



higher gastronomic quality, and affording more exciting 

 sport. It is true that many people delight in pulling 

 out pike, and in southern waters they become almost as 

 wary as trout, and take a lot of catching. But it is 

 dispiriting to basket fish that no one will thank you for 

 bringing home. Gimp, too, is essential, for the pike's 

 teeth are fatal even to the strongest salmon gut ; and 

 the chivalry of the struggle is all on one side when the 

 angler knows that he may haul on his tackle as hard as 

 he likes without risk of fracture. 



The accounts brought to this country of sport with 

 black bass in North American waters prompted the 

 experiment of naturalising them on this side of the 

 Atlantic. They are fish of the perch tribe, armed with 

 the characteristic spiny dorsal fin, exceedingly active 

 and voracious, and producing flesh said to resemble 

 that of the haddock. They are more powerful and 

 grow far larger than our perch, which is the only British 

 fish able to live on nearly equal terms in enclosed waters 

 with pike ; and, as a sporting fish, the black bass is said 

 to be no whit inferior to trout, though accounts differ 

 as to their readiness to rise at the fly. Most of those 

 taken, it is believed, come at a spinning bait. 



Black bass have been established for some years at 

 Lord Exeter's ponds at Burghley, and in 1892 it was 

 decided to introduce them into Scottish waters. In 

 the spring of that year a pond about one hundred and 

 fifty yards long was cleaned out for their reception and 

 left dry during the summer. The bottom was well 

 limed to destroy, as far as possible, every vestige of eels 



