116 AMERICAN ANGLER'S BOOK. 



" Sunny." Yankee boys call them " Punkin Seeds," or by the 

 more euphonic though appropriate name of " Kivers ;" prob- 

 ably from their appropriate shape for the cover of a tea-cup 

 or pickle jar. 



It is a bootless task to describe the manner of taking 

 Sunnies ; any incipient angler of twelve summers would beat 

 Theophilus South or Sir Humphrey Davy at catching them. 



It would be hard to tell the amount of early Saturday 

 morning digging for earth-worms ; or how much bark-peeling 

 of old logs for grubs ; or how much anxious search for wasps' 

 nests, they have occasioned. Or how many long sunshiny 

 Saturdays have been spent in search of them ; or, when alternat- 

 ing swimming with fishing, and starkly skirting the edge of 

 the mill-pond, how often the youthful " sans culotte" has 

 dropped his bait before their noses, beside the old stump or 

 big rock, and " whopped them out." 



Many an angler will remember the untiring patience with 

 which, in boyhood, he has displayed his worm-covered hook 

 before a half score of these pretty fish, and seen the larger 

 {dux gregis) separate himself from the rest and come towards 

 the bait, sail majestically around, backing and filling, eager, 

 though doubtful of the cheat, and glaring on it with his big 

 permanent eye, and, at last, just as the little angler gives up 

 the game, and is despairingly drawing it away, with a bold 

 rush, the Sunny seizes the barbed hook, and in a trice he is 

 bouncing on the grass, and a hand is on him that relaxes 

 not its grasp till the cruel switch is thrust through his gill. 



Sunfish are extremely predatory in their habits, and the 

 t3rrannical little fellow of our aquarium, whom we have 

 dubbed " Captain Walker," is dearer to us, because he is a 

 representative of those we were accustomed to fish for in our 

 schoolboy days. 



In preparing their bed for spawning, a pair of Sunfish will 



