The Sunfish Family ii 



the lovely trout of the mountain brook to the 

 giant tarpon of the sea. 



In the application of so broad and sweeping an 

 assertion each and every attribute of a game-fish 

 must be well considered : his habitat ; his aptitude 

 to rise to the fly ; his struggle for freedom ; his 

 manner of resistance ; his weight as compared 

 with other game-fishes ; and his excellence as a 

 food-fish, must be separately and collectively con- 

 sidered and duly and impartially weighed. His 

 haunts are amid most charming and varied 

 scenes. Not in the silent and solemn solitudes 

 of the primeval forests, where animated Nature is 

 evidenced mainly in swarms of gnats, black-flies, 

 and mosquitoes ; nor under the shadows of grand 

 and lofty mountains, guarded by serried ranks of 

 pines and firs, but whose sombre depths are void 

 of feathered songsters. However grand, sublime, 

 and impressive such scenes truly are, they do not 

 appeal profoundly to the angler. He must have 

 life, motion, sound. He courts Nature in her 

 more communicative moods, and in the haunts 

 of the black-bass his desires are realized. Wad- 

 ing down the rippling stream, casting his flies 

 hither and yon, alert for the responsive tug, the 

 sunlight is filtered through overhanging trees, 



