THE BLACK BASSES. 
61 
The first experiment in their transportation seems to have been that 
mentioned by A. M. Valentine, who states that a pond near Janesville, 
Wis., was stocked with Black Bass about 1847. In 1850 Mr. S. T. Tis¬ 
dale carried twenty-seven Large-mouths from Saratoga Lake, N. Y., to 
Flax Pond, in Agawam, Mass. The manner in which the Potomac was 
stocked with Small-mouths is also well known. It was in 1853, soon after 
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was finished, that Gen. Shriver, of 
Wheeling, carried a number of young fish from the Ohio to Cumberland, 
Md., in the water-tank of a locomotive engine. These he placed in the 
basin of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, whence they soon penetrated to 
all parts of the Potomac basin, and as far down the river as Mount Ver¬ 
non. The custom of stocking streams soon became popular, and through 
private enterprise and the labors of State Fish Commissioners nearly 
every available body of water in New England and the Middle States has 
been filled with these fish. This movement has not met with unmixed 
approval, for by the ill-advised enthusiasm of some of its advocates a 
number of trout streams have been destroyed, and complaints are heard 
that the fisheries of certain rivers have been injured by them. The 
results have been on the whole very beneficial. The Bass never will 
become the food of the millions. The New York market receives proba¬ 
bly less than 10,000 pounds of them annually, and they are nowhere very 
numerous. Yet hundreds of bodies of waste water are now stocked with 
them in sufficient numbers to afford pleasant sport and considerable 
quantities of excellent food. 
The flesh of the Bass is hard, white and flaky, and not particularly re¬ 
markable for its flavor. When sufficiently large, it is perhaps better that 
it should be broiled, and served with white sauce. The smaller Bass may 
be treated as pan-fish. They are not well suited for broiling, except in 
the hands of the most judicious of cooks. 
The Black Bass is one of the most universally popular of American 
fishes. Even those who know the joys of trout and salmon angling do 
not disdain it. For one man ,who can go forth in search of salmon, and 
twenty to whom trout are not impossible, there are a thousand who can 
visit the Bass in his limpid home. There are many methods of angling 
for Bass. Those who use rod and reel are perhaps not unreasonable when 
they profess to pity their uncultured brethren who prefer the ignominious 
method of trolling with hand-line and spoon-bait. 
