THE WHITE PERCH 



DURING the War of the Revolution, 

 Schoepf , a Hessian surgeon stationed on 

 Long Island, described a number of our 

 common fishes without naming them 

 scientifically. One of these, the perch or river 

 perch, he recorded as an inhabitant of the coasts of 

 New York and Long Island, in and at the mouths 

 of fresh-water streams. It was left for Gmelin to 

 give it the name Perca americana in his edition of 

 Linnasus's " Systema Naturae," in 1788. In 1814 

 Dr. Mitchill established the genus Morone for the 

 same fish, and now our white perch is referred to in 

 the books under the name Morone americana. 



The genus Morone as now accepted includes the 

 white perch and the yellow bass — another illus- 

 tration of the possible confusion resulting from too 

 great dependence upon common names alone. Mo- 

 rone differs from the striped-bass genus in having 

 the back-fins joined, the spines strong, the anal fin 

 with ten soft rays, the anal spines not graduated 

 (that is, the second and third are nearly equal and 



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