34 BOOK OF THE BLACK BASS. 



altogether correct, but the name is a happy inspiration, as gopd as 

 salmoides is bad. Soon after (1822) Le Sueur described the same fish 

 from Florida as Cichla floridana, a name which would be well enough 

 if it were confined to the streams of the orange groves, but it seems 

 rather narrow in view of the fact that the fish is found in Mexico 

 and Manitoba, and every-where between. 



Next, a specimen came to Cuvier and Valenciennes, under the 

 title of " Black Bass of Lake Huron." To their eyes the fish was 

 black enough, but not a Bass (i. e. Labrax), and they called it Huro 

 nigricans. the " Black Huron," making a new genus for it because 

 their specimen had but six dorsal spines, the last four having been 

 broken off, leaving two dorsal fins. The colored figure which they 

 published remained a standing puzzle for some time. 



In Dr. Kirtland's private copy of his own fishes of Ohio he had 

 carefully drawn off and colored a copy of Cuvier's figure of his Black 

 Huron, and had all his life sought for such a fish in the lakes and 

 never found it. About a year before his death, Dr. Kirtland asked 

 me if I had ever seen that fish or could tell him what it was, and I 

 had the pleasure of informing him that it was a demoralized Black 

 Bass. Next, in 1854, Professor Agassiz, thinking that this fish in the 

 Tennessee River could not be the same as in Lake Huron, called it 

 Grystes nobilis, a good name enough, but 34 years too late. In the 

 same year, specimens from Texas were named Grystes nuecensis by 

 Baird and Girard, but the fish is found in other streams than the 

 Rio Nueces. Then a meaty and excellent name, Grystes megastoma, 

 was given by Dr. Garlick in 1857, which closes the American synony- 

 my, but the disease has broken out in France again, and Messrs. 

 Vaillant and Bocourt, of Paris, who ought to know better, have again 

 described it as Dioplites treculii and Dioplites variabilis. The poorest 

 business a French naturalist can engage in is that of describing new 

 species of American fishes. A good share of our cumbersome and 

 confusing synonymy is due to Gallic assistance. 



Now, in 1873, Prof, Gill, in his masterly review of these species, 

 followed the thread back only to Haro nigricans in 1828, and so 

 called the big-mouthed Black Bass, as he was bound to do, Microp- 

 ter us nigricans. The names floridanus and pallidus were presumed by 

 him to refer to the other species, for the reason that he had never 

 seen a big-mouthed Black Bass, either from the Ohio River or from 



