310 AMERICAN GAME. 
This propensity is taken advantage of by the angler, 
since, when he has once struck upon a well-stocked 
haunt, while the fish are in the humor to bite, he will be 
very apt, if patient and skillful, to take the whole shoal 
without the loss of a single fish. 
The growth of the yellow perch is slow, and appears 
to be proportioned pretty accurately to the size and 
character of the waters which he frequents. In small, 
swift-running brooks, or little spring-ponds or mill-dams, 
he rarely exceeds a few inches in length and a few 
ounces in weight, partaking generally of the green and 
silvery type of the fish. In estuaries and large rivers, in 
the pellucid tarns and lakelets, which are dotted so 
beautifully through all the uplands ‘of the eastern and 
middle states from Maine to Pennsylvania, in the vast 
expanses of the great northern lakes of Canada, in the 
giant rivers of the west, they attain far more rapidly to 
a great size, three or four pounds being a run by no 
‘means unusual, and individuals being not unfrequently 
taken up to five, six and seven pounds, when they are 
very firm, fat, and in capital condition for the table. 
They may be caught in all months of the year. Mr. 
Brown considers that they “may be had in the 
largest quantities and in the finest condition from May 
to July ;” but from my own experience, which has been 
limited principally to the lakelets of Maine, to Green- 
wood or Wawayanda lake, in Orange county, New York, 
to Lake Hopatkong, desecrated into Brooklyn pond, in 
