THE BASSES: FRES H-W ATER AND MARINE 



around them with the care and motherly solicitude 

 displayed by a hen toward her brood of chicks. 

 But few fishes have this " instinct," which is a con- 

 venient word to apply to such a quality, although 

 " hereditary force of reason " or " emotion " would 

 seem to express it more forcibly. 



The eggs of the black bass cannot be artificially 

 fertilized ; they can be stripped only with great diffi- 

 culty, and the male must be killed in order to obtain 

 the milt. It is therefore fortunate that the natural 

 increase of the species, when left to their own re- 

 sources and the happy development of parental 

 care of their young, has been found sufficient to 

 stock waters of any size with this noble game- 

 fish. 



The black bass prepares a modest nuptial bed 

 on a gravel, rock, sand, or clay bottom, and in some 

 waters (Greenwood Lake particularly) the nests 

 and young have been seen on the tops of submerged 

 tree-stumps. It is a mooted question as to whether 

 the male or the female prepares the nest. The 

 similarity in the appearance of both sexes would 

 seem to account for the different opinions of fish- 

 culturists on this subject, although the female fish, 

 in her gravid condition, shows, to a more or less 

 degree, a distension of the abdomen. As the 

 spawning-season approaches, which in the South 

 commences as early as March and in the Middle 

 States begins about the 5th of May and extends 



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