SCIENTIFIC HISTORY OF THE BLACK BASS.
"For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and to the next ages."-BACON.
THE scientific history of the Black Bass is a most unsatisfactory one. This is owing to a train of accidental circumstances, and to the neglect of thorough investigation of its earliest history, as recorded by Lacépède, the renowned French naturalist, in his great work, "Histoire Naturelle des Poissons."*
It will be well, perhaps, before entering upon the minutiæ of the subject, to present a brief synopsis of the scien
* “The great work on the natural history of fish, by the Count Lacépède, was the next publication after that of Bloch upon general Ichthyology. It is not, like others in different branches of Zoology, a servile copy of the Linnæan divisions, but numerous others are defined for the first time: and when we look back to what systematic ichthyology was before, and what it became by the labors of Lacépède, no one can in fairness deny but that a great and important advance in this science had been effected. No naturalist can hope to achieve more than this, however great may be his abilities; and we do not, therefore, understand upon what ground so much censure has recently been cast upon the works of this distinguished Frenchman by some of his own countrymen."-SWAINSON, Nat. Hist. and Class. of Fishes, I., 58, 1838.