APPENDIX. 283 



generally do. They can hardly be called predacious, but 

 herbiverous, as carp are, and therefore not destructive to 

 the fry of finer species. Although fond of muddy streams 

 and still waters, they will thrive in any water, and would 

 perhaps improve on the condition of the Thames below 

 London, which is so detrimental to other fish. They are 

 found all spring, summer, and autumn, in our Philadelphia 

 market, tied in bunches, unhided and decapitated, and 

 hawked about the streets by fish women. The texture of 

 the meat is something like trout, and they are next to that 

 fish in excellence for the pan. 



Another fish I have for some time thought of bringing 

 to your notice — you have made slight allusion to it — the 

 black bass. There are two species : Grystes nigricans, the 

 lake bass ; and Grystes salmoides, the bass of the western 

 and southern waters (by west I mean west of the Allegheny 

 mountains). They are predacious rascals, though, and 

 would play havoc with salmon fry, and therefore should 

 not be introduced into such streams ; the G. nigricans, 

 however, would seldom if ever go out of the lakes, especially 

 into such water as salmon spawn in, though the other 

 species might. 



Both of these species are very easily naturalized in any 

 new habitat. Many of our lakelets, ponds, and millponds 

 have become productive of G. nigricans. The other fish, 

 G. salmoides, has been introdu-ced into the Potomac, and 

 become abundant there. Three rods have made a catch 

 in a day of 3261b. This fish was unknown in the Potomac 

 until about fourteen years since, when an engineer on the 

 Baltimore and Ohio railroad, as he was about starting east- 

 ward, put twenty of them into a bag-net and soused them 

 into the water tank of the locomotive. When he arrived 

 at Cumberland, a town on the eastern side of the moun- 

 tains, he let the fish loose into the Potomac, a diminutive 



