106 Big Game Fishes 
sible conception which the imagination might 
devise, is seen, glorified by the sunlight and 
bathed in marvellous tints of green, while 
through every interstice the deep-blue water 
forms a matchless mosaic. At low tide the .. 
long fluted leaves lie like snakes upon the sur- 
face, the wind often lifting them, but at the flood 
they are submerged and swing in the current at 
an angle of thirty-five or forty degrees; now 
straightening up or turning, according to the 
whim or fancy of the mysterious currents which 
are found about these islands bathed by the 
Kuroshiwo, the great Black Current of Japan. 
This submarine forest is the home of the king 
of the bass, Steveolepis gigas (Ayres), the gigantic 
black sea-bass, possibly the largest of: all the 
serranoids. In appearance it bears a marked 
resemblance to the small black bass. Imagine 
a small-mouth black bass seven feet in length, 
weighing six or seven hundred pounds, and some 
idea of this monster, which is a common fish in 
the region described, may be conceived. It has 
been my good fortune to see the fish in its native 
haunts. Lying prone on the deck of a small 
boat, with my face within a foot of the water, I 
was watching my bait forty feet down among 
