SCIENIDJE. 205 



ACANTHOPTERYGI1. SCIENID^E. 



THE SEA BASS. 



BLACK SEA BASS. 

 Centropristes Nigricans ; Cuvier. 



THIS is an excellent fish, and a very general favorite on the table 

 It is with us a summer fish of passage, in the Northern States I mean, 

 appearing on the coasts of New York during the months of May, 

 June and July, in which it is frequent in the markets, and readily 

 taken with the baited hook. 



Its geographical range is very wide, extending from the coasts of 

 Florida to Cape Cod, on the shores of Massachusetts ; abundant in 

 the vicinity of Martha's Vineyard, it is rare in Boston bay. Properly 

 a southern species, though it visits the waters of the Eastern States 

 in summer, it invariably returns to the eastward in autumn. 



With the wonted stupid perversity of their order, the fishermen of 

 our coasts have confounded it, by means of absurd misnomers, with 

 two entirely different species, the BLUE FISH, Temnodon Saltator, 

 and the BLACK FISH or TAUTOG, Tautoga Americana, calling it com- 

 monly by both these appellations. 



The color of the Sea Bass is a general blue black, sometimes more 

 or less slightly bronzed, the edges of every scale are much darker 

 than the prevailing color, which gives the character of a black net- 

 work on a bluish ground to the whole surface of the fish. The fins, 

 excepting the pectoral, are pale blue ; the dorsal and anal more or 

 less distinctly spotted with a darker shade of the same color. 



The body is oblong and compressed; the scales are of an oblong 

 form, covering the opercula and extending high up on the dorsal ; the 

 preoperculum is distinctly toothed along its entire margin, the oper- 

 culum has a large spine on it, and another above ; the teeth are like 

 velvet pile on all the bones, those on the outer edges of the jaws the 

 largest. 



