THE BASS 229 



its roughness, due to the presence of little denticles 

 near the free edges of the adherent scales. Pope is 

 of unknown origin and is said to have been applied 

 as a term of contempt ; the cruel custom of pressing 

 a cork on to the dorsal spines and returning the 

 fish to the water, thus condemning it to a lingering 

 death, as it must swim at the surface and cannot 

 find food, may possibly have originated in hatred 

 of papistry. 



It is of interest to note that two such very 

 distinct species as the Perch and the Ruffe form 

 a natural hybrid, 1 which has been obtained in the 

 Danube, although it has not yet been recorded 

 from our waters. In the number of scales and 

 fin-rays this hybrid is intermediate between the 

 parent forms, but experimental breeding has 

 shown that whilst the offspring of a Ruffe father 

 and Perch mother are intermediate in other 

 characters also, as in form and coloration, showing 

 the speckling of the Ruffe and the bars of the 

 Perch, yet the progeny of a male Perch and a 

 female Ruffe resemble the mother in form and 

 coloration, and are not very easy to distinguish 

 from pure-bred Ruffes. These hybrids are not 

 fertile inter se, but are quite fertile with either 

 parent. 



THE BASS (Morone labrax) belongs to the Sea- 

 perch family (Serranid<z\ which differs from the 

 Perch family in that the anal fin has three spines 

 instead of one or two, whilst the eye is supported 

 by an internal laminar process of the suborbital 

 bones. 

 1 Kammerer, Arch. EntwickeL mech. Leipzig, xxiii., 1907, p. 511. 



