ROCK BASS. 943 
by the laws of scientific nomenclature, we are bound to use. By the operation of these 
laws every genus must bear the oldest (generic) name bestowed on any of its members, 
unless this name has been previously used for something else, or is glaringly false (not 
simply irrevelant or inappropriate), or is otherwise ineligible; every species must bear 
the first (specific) name imposed upon it (unless, as before, it be for one reason or 
another ineligible), and the proper name of any species must be made by combining the 
above mentioned specific and generic names. 
Phis is the law on the subject, and, as elsewhere, the law is usually, though not al- 
ways simply right. We accept many meaningless, or even objectionable names, to 
avoid the confusion attendant upon arbitrary changes. Were it not for these rules 
science would ever suffer, as it has much suffered in the past from the efforts of the 
improvers of nomenclature—men who invent new names for old obj ects, for the purpose 
of seeing their own personal designations, Smith, Jones, Brehm, Reichenow, or what’ 
not, after them. In the words of “a right Sagamann,” John Cassin: ‘‘ There is not, 
evidently, any other course consistent with justice and the plainest principles of right: 
and morality, and, in fact, no alternative, unless, indeed, an operator is disposed to set 
himself up for the first of all history, as is said of an early Chineseemperor. The latter 
course, in a degree, singular as it may appear, is not entirely unknown to naturalists, 
especially to those who regard science as a milch cow rather than a transcendent god- 
dess, a distinction in classification first made by the great poet Schiller.” 
Now, as to the names of our species of Bass, 1 take it for granted that the reader 
knows (a) what a Black Bass is, and what it is not (6); that there are two species of 
Black Bass, the large-mouthed and the small-mouthed, the latter being with most 
anglers the Black Bass par excellence, the other the off horse, and (c) what the difference 
between them is. In any event you will find it written in Professor Gill’s most excel- 
lent paper, ‘‘On the Species of the Genus Micropterus,” in the ‘‘ Proceedings of the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1873.” 
The earliest published notice of a Black Bass with a scientific name was one of the 
smail-mouthed kind, sent to Lacepede from South Carolina, This specimen bore with 
it the name of ‘‘trout,” after the abominable, contemptible, and pernicious and other- 
wise detestable custom of our erring Southern brethren of calling a black bass in the 
river, or a weak fish in the sea a ‘‘ trout.” Now, we may presume that the great French 
naturalist was puzzled by this name, and put on his spectacles to see what in the 
world could be ‘‘ trout-like” about such a fish, with its coarse scales and spinous fins. 
To him it looked more like a wrasse or cunner, Labrus, than a trout; but no matter, it 
must resemble a trout somehow or the Americans would not call it so. So he put it 
down in his great work as Labrus salmoides, the trout-like Labrus, to the everlasting’ 
injury of the fish, the name is not only senseless, but bad Latin, the proper form of the 
word being Salmonoides. 
Lacepede had another specimen of the Black Bass, without Jabel, and from an un- 
known locality. This one had the last rays of the dorsal broken and torn loose from 
the rest, and was otherwise in a forlorn condition. This specimen he considered as a 
genus distinct from the other, and he gave it the name of Micropterus dolomieu— “ Dolo- 
mieu’s small fin.” Dolomieu was a friend of Lacepede, who had about as much to do 
with the fish as George Washington or Victor Hugo. No one could tell, either from 
figure or description, what this Micropterus dolomieu was; but Cuvier, thirty years later, 
found the original type and pronouuced it Black Bass, in poor condition, and declared 
that the ‘‘genus and species of Micropterus ought to disappear from the catalogue of 
fishes.” 
