Percoidea, or Perch-like Fishes o17 
among the most important of American game-fishes, abounding 
in all clear waters east of the Alleghanies and resisting the evils 
of civilization far better than the trout. 
The small-mouthed black bass, Micropterus dolontien, is the 
most valuable of the species. Its mouth, although large, is 
relatively small, the cleft not extending beyond the eye. The 
green coloration is broken in the young by bronze cross-bands. 
The species frequents only running streams, preferring clear 
and cold waters, and it extends its range from Canada as far 
to the southward as such streams can be found. Dr. James A. 
Henshall, an accomplished angler, author of the “Book of the 
Black Bass,” says: ‘‘The black bass is eminently an American 
fish; he has the faculty of asserting himself and of making 
himself completely at home wherever placed. He is plucky, 
game, brave, unyielding to the last when hooked. He has the 
arrowy rush and vigor of a trout, the untiring strength and 
bold leap of a salmon, while he has a system of fighting tactics 
peculiarly his own. I consider him inch for inch and pound 
for pound the gamest fish that swims.” 
In the same vein Charles Hallock writes: ‘‘No doubt the 
bass is the appointed successor of the trout; not through heri- 
tage, nor selection, nor by interloping, but by foreordination. 
Truly, it is sad to contemplate, in the not distant future, the 
extinction of a beautiful race of creatures, whose attributes 
have been sung by all the poets; but we regard the inevitable 
with the same calm philosophy with which the astronomer watches 
the burning out of a world, knowing that it will be succeeded 
by a new creation. As we mark the soft varitinted flush of 
the trout disappear in the eventide, behold the sparkle of the 
coming bass, as he leaps in the morning of his glory! We hardly 
know which to admire the most—the velvet livery and the 
charming graces of the departing courtier, or the flash of the 
armor-plates of the advancing warrior. The bass will unques- 
tionably prove himself a worthy substitute for his predecessor 
and a candidate for a full legacy of honors. 
“No doubt, when every one of the older states shall become 
as densely settled as Great Britain itself, and all the rural aspects 
of the crowded domain resemble the suburban surroundings 
of our Boston; when every feature of the pastoral landscape 
