American Fisheries Society. ie) 
if possible, so that any scattering yearlings that may have es- 
caped the seine the previous spring may be removed. This is 
essential if success is to be had with the succeeding hatch, for 
even a few well advanced yearling fish in the pond would, the 
following season, destroy large numbers of fry and fingerling 
fish. 
With reference to the guarding of the nest by the male, the 
observations at Northville could hardly substantiate what has 
been said of this feature of the small mouth bass work by others 
to the effect that the male guards the young bass until they are 
about one inch in length. The writer’s experience has proved 
that soon after they begin to take food, from eight to ten days 
old, the young bass begin to distribute themselves around the 
edge of the pond, the adult male fish giving them practically no 
attention. They are fairly well scattered about che edge of the 
pond, if it is not too large, long before they are an inch in 
length. Furthermore, I see no reason why they should be 
guarded, and kept huddled up, as they are in quest of food, and 
the more they scatter, the more and better feeding grounds are 
to be found. It is also certain that fry transferred from the 
screened nests to a rearing pond, away from the care of the 
adults, do equally as well as those left in the pond with the 
parent fish. In this connection, another point to be brought out 
is that practically none of the young bass are eaten by the parent 
fish of either sex, until they are from one and one-half to two 
and one-half inches long. 
In no paper or publication has been discovered any state- 
ment as to the exact period of incubation, in a given tempera- 
ture of water, of the eggs of the small mouth black bass. It 
may, therefore, be of interest to cite a specific case observed at 
the Northville Station the season just passed, that gives this 
data with considerable more exactness. In order to arrive at 
something like a definite conclusion, an artificial nest selected at 
random at the beginning of operations, was marked, and care- 
fully studied thereafter. On May 16th, between 10:00 a. M. 
and 3:00 P. M., eggs were spawned on this particular nest. It 
was examined very closely from day to day until May 21st, on 
which day at I1:00 A. M. there was no indication of the fish 
leaving the shell, but at 3:00 Pp. M. all were hatched, thus deter- 
