motive to Cumberland, in the coal-region of
Western Maryland. There he deposited them in the Potomac, with the
injunction which forms the heraldic motto of the State of
Maryland--_Crescite et multiplicamini_. The first part of this excellent
precept they obeyed by proceeding to devour all the aboriginal fish in the
river, and waxing extremely hearty upon the liberal diet. The second they
performed with a diligence so commendable that the name of them in the
river became as legion, and the original possessors of the waters were
steadily extirpated or took despairingly to small rivulets, and led ever
after a life of undeserved ignominy and obscurity. There were bass in the
river from the Falls of the Potomac, near Georgetown, to a point as near
its source as any self-respecting fish could approach without detriment to
the buttons on his vest by reason of the shallowness of the water. They
were in all its tributaries, and in fact monopolized its waters completely.
Had the supply of small fish for food held out, it is impossible to say to
what extent they would have increased. They might in their numerical
enormity have rivalled the condition of that famous river, the Wabash,
which in a certain season of excessive dryness became so low that a local
journal of established veracity described the fish as having to stand upon
their heads to breathe, and while in that constrained attitude being pulled
by the inhabitants like radishes in a garden.

It has been contended by some ichthyologists that the black bass does not
eat its own kind, but the spectacle which I recently beheld of a
four-pounder, defunct and floating on the water, with the tail and half the
body of a ten-ounce bass sticking out of his distended mouth, affords but
inadequate confirmation of their views. I sat upon the bass in question,
and rendered a verdict of "choked to death, and served him right." He had
swallowed the younger fish, who, for aught he knew to the contrary, or
cared, might have been his own son; and his confidence in his capacity
being ably supported by his appetite, he undertook a contract to which he
was unequal in the matter of expansion. He couldn't disgorge, being in the
predicament of the boa-constrictor who swallows a hen head first, and finds
her go against the grain when he would fain reconsider the subject. The
head of the inside fish was partially digested, but that process had
imparted no gratification to either party, and both were d