22 FISH—-CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
Germany, thus occupying a wider range than any fresh-water 
fish in the world. 
The fact that the original habitat of the black bass does not 
embrace New England and the Pacific slope is not remarkable, 
for the characteristically American forms of fishes, as has been 
observed by Prof. Jordan, are, generally speaking, rare or absent 
in the waters of these sections. This fact was noticed by Prof. 
Louis Agassiz, who called New England “a zoological island,” 
on account of its faunal peculiarities as compared with the rest 
of the United States. Thus, of more than a hundred genera of 
fresh-water fishes now known to occur in the waters east of the 
Mississippi River, only about one-fourth occur in New England, 
and of these all except a half-dozen genera are represented by 
but a single species each; and not more than thirty-five genera 
occur in the waters of the Pacific slope. Almost any stream of 
any extent of the Ohio or Mississippi basins will furnish double 
the number of genera and species as the entire waters of either 
of the above named sections. Thus, as Prof. Jordan states, ‘In 
the little White River at Indianapolis, seventy species, repre- 
senting, forty-eight genera, are known to occur—twice as many 
as inhabit all the rivers of New England.” 
The distribution of the black bass does not seem to be much af- 
fected by geological formations, climatic influencés, or the char- 
acter of waters; for although one or both species may have been 
absent originally in certain localities, they readily adapt them- 
selves to the waters of these sections when transplanted, and 
rapidly increase. 
Originally both species were at home among the primordial 
rock of the eozoic period of Lake Champlain, Northern Wis- 
consin, and along the Appalachian chain in the Carolinas and 
Northern Georgia. They flourished amid the paleozoic rocks of 
the Great Lake region and the Mississippi Valley, and in the 
coal measures of the Ohio, Illinois and Missouri river basins. 
While in the marine tertiary formations of the cenozoic period 
along the Atlantic and Gulf slopes of the Southern States, the 
large-mouthed bass alone occurs. Thus, while the small- 
mouthed bass seems to be restricted naturally to the older for- 
mations, the large-mouthed bass roams at his own sweet will 
