THE BLA CK BASSES. 
57 
the various drainage systems were connected by canals, the distribution 
limits of the two species were much more sharply defined, the Large-mouth 
inhabiting, perhaps, the upper part of the basin of the Great Lakes and 
St. Lawrence and the rivers of the southern seaboard, while the Small- 
mouth was found chiefly in the northern part of the Mississippi basin. 
This theory can never be demonstrated, however, for the early ichthy¬ 
ologists had not adopted the accurate methods of study now in use, and 
their descriptions of the fish they saw are scarcely good enough to guess 
by. The mingling of the two forms might have been accomplished in an 
incredibly short time. A few young Bass will multiply so rapidly as to 
stock a large lake in five years. The Potomac and its tributaries swarmed 
with them ten years after their first introduction. 
A very suggestive incident occurred at the Brookline Reservoir, near 
Boston. Nine Bass were introduced in July, 1862. Four or five years 
after, in examining the water-pipes leading thence to Long Pond, Bass in 
considerable numbers and of large size were found ; and what is still 
more strange, they had, either as young fish,‘or in the egg state, gone 
through the screen at the mouth of the pipe and found their way into the 
pond itself, having accomplished an underground journey of fifteen miles 
through a brick aqueduct nowhere more than six feet in diameter. 
Gill states that the two forms of Micropterus have long inhabited the waters 
of the cismontane slope of the United States, except those of the New Eng¬ 
land States and the Atlantic . seaboard of the Middle States. Only one, 
however, the Small-mouth, appears to have been an original inhabitant of 
the hydrographic basin of the Ohio River. 
The Bass do not seem to depend closely on temperature. Having no 
opportunity of avoiding the cold, they sink to the deepest part of their 
watery domain at the approach of winter, and if the chill penetrates to 
their retreat, their vitality is diminished, their blood flows more slowly, they 
feel no need of food, and forthwith enter into a state of hybernation. 
Mr. Fred. Mather kept one in his aquarium nearly all of one winter. It 
ate nothing, and seldom moved any members except its eyes. In deep 
lakes, however, they can sink below the reach of surface chills, and here 
they are sometimes caught with a hook through the ice. In the South 
their activity never ceases. Any one who has seen Black Bass feeding 
must have been impressed with their immense power of movement. They 
soon become masters of the waters in which they are placed. Sun-fish, 
