GENERAL AND SPECIFIC FEATURES. 143 



specific names, and not by their odors. It is just as easy 

 to write the distinctive name " Black Bass " as the general 

 name " Bass." 



Bass is a very vague term at best, meaning one thing in 

 one part of the country, and a totally different thing in 

 another. Along the eastern coast it means a Striped Bass 

 (Roccus lineatus), or a Sea Bass (Centropristes atrarius) in 

 Florida it means a Channel Bass (Scicenops ocellatus) in 

 the west it may be either a Black Bass (Mieropterus), a 

 Rock Bass (Ambloplites rupestris), a White Bass (Roccus 

 chrysops), or a Calico Bass (Pomoxys nigromoculatus) 

 while in Otsego County, New York, it means an Otsego 

 Bass (Cbregonus clupeiformis var. otsego), which is not a 

 Bass at all but a white fish. 



Then, again, some of these correspondents write of the 

 real Black Bass, meaning usually M. dolomieu, the small- 

 mouthed species, seeming to imply that the other species is 

 not real, or at least is not the Black Bass, but something 

 else a kind of pseudo variety. Others in writing of the 

 large-mouthed species, M. salmoides owing to its former 

 name, M. nigricans have called it the real Black Bass > 

 under the impression that as it was t named nigricans i. e., 

 black the other species must be some other color, and 

 could not be the simon-pure article. Now, one species is 

 not more real than the other; the small-mouthed Bass is 

 regarded as the type species because it was the first to be 

 described by a naturalist, and given a specific and generic 

 name. 



The term "Black Bass," then, is distinctive, and should 

 always be used when alluding to the genus generally. 

 The different species should be mentioned as the small- 

 mouthed Black Bass or the large-mouthed Black Bass, as 



