THE FRESH- WATER BASSES 



The Study of Fishes 



DURING the last quarter of a century 

 there has evidently been among anglers 

 an increasing and cumulative desire 

 to follow their pastime with improved 

 equipments for capture, constructed on more 

 scientific principles, and more deceptive to the 

 fishes they wish to basket. Equally important and 

 much more encouraging to the educated class of 

 Waltonians is the increasing interest taken by the 

 craft at large in acquiring knowledge of the habits 

 and life-histories of the fish they seek to lure. But 

 unfortunately at the threshold of this knowledge 

 there is a drawback to its acquirement, in that they 

 are compelled, in the case of many game-fishes, to 

 learn by rote, as it were, their technical nomencla- 



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