March, 1920 
FOREST AND STREAM 
151 
with the trout. The only way to culti- 
vate the black bass in domestication is 
by pond culture, that is, to allow the fish 
to propagate naturally and at the right 
moment to separate the young from the 
adult fish. This, so far as I was aware, 
had never been done, so I determined to 
try it out on my premises. 
From 1868 to 1876 I was engaged in 
the study of the life and scientific history 
of the black bass species in the numer- 
ous lakes near my home. In 1868 I be- 
gan the experiment of propagating the 
black bass in domestication. On my 
home grounds there were two ponds, fed 
by bottom springs, the sub-soil being 
gravel. Back of the stable was a small 
pond, circular in form, of about seventy- 
five feet in diameter, and rather densely 
fringed with trees and shrubbery, with 
a depth of from two to four feet. The 
outlet was through a small rivulet to 
Lake Fowler, which I widened and placed 
very small-meshed screens at both ends. 
A portion of the pond had a gravelly 
bottom at the outlet, and a rather muddy 
one at the other end, with patches of 
aquatic vegetation encircling the shore. 
E ARLY in the spring I placed a num- 
ber of pairs of black bass of both 
species in the pond and fed them 
regularly with minnows and crawfish, 
also with chopped fish. When the fish 
began to pair off and show signs of the 
breeding season, I watched them daily 
with an opera-glass from behind the 
screen of bushes; noted the nest-build- 
ing, spawning, fecundation of the eggs, 
incubation and hatching of the eggs, and 
observed with great interest the watch- 
ful care of eggs and fry by the male 
fish. As soon as the parent fish aban- 
doned the fry, when they rose from the 
nest and took refuge among the weeds, 
I removed the screens and turned the 
parent fish into the lake and replaced 
the screens with solid boards, with a few 
inches of fine wire screen at the top for 
the overflow. 
I kept the fingerlings in the ponds 
during the summer, feeding' them every 
few days, and in the fall took out the 
gates, giving them free access to the 
lake. I repeated the experiment for five 
or six years. As there were both large- 
mouth and small-mouth bass in the pond, 
I soon discovered the predilection of the 
small-mouth to make its nest on the 
gravel, and that the large-mouth pre- 
ferred muddy bottom or the roots of 
water plants. So far as I know, or so 
far as recorded, this was the first ex- 
periment in the domestication, or pond 
culture, of the black bass species. 
With the black bass, as with all other 
species of the finny tribe, the care of the 
eggs and the fostering of the young de- 
volves upon the male parent; after the 
female emits the eggs the subsequent 
proceedings interest her no more. The 
male parent watches over the eggs until 
hatched, and protects the young fry 
until they leave the nest. In the case 
of most marine fishes and many fresh 
water species, notably the salmon and 
trout, their eggs are abandoned by both 
parents as soon as emitted and fertilized. 
The various ways and means of some 
fishes in caring for and fostering tlieir 
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