In the same vein Charles Hallock writes: "No doubt the bass is the appointed successor of the trout; not through heritage, nor selection, nor by interloping, but by foreordination. Truly, it is sad to contemplate, in the not distant future, the extinction of a beautiful race of creatures, whose attributes have been sung by all the poets; but we regard the inevitable with the same calm philosophy with which the astronomer watches the burning out of a world, knowing that it will be succeeded by a new creation. As we mark the soft varitinted flush of the trout disappear in the eventide, behold the sparkle of the coming bass, as he leaps in the morning of his glory! We hardly know which to admire the most—the velvet livery and the charming graces of the departing courtier, or the flash of the armor-plates of the advancing warrior. The bass will unquestionably prove himself a worthy substitute for his predecessor and a candidate for a full legacy of honors. "No doubt, when every one of the older states shall become as densely settled as Great Britain itself, and all the rural aspects of the crowded domain resemble the suburban surroundings of our Boston; when every feature of the pastoral landscape shall wear the finished appearance of European lands, and every verdant field be closely cropped by lawn-mowers and guarded by hedges, and every purling stream which meanders through it has its water-bailiff, we shall still have speckled trout from which the radiant spots have faded, and tasteless fish, to catch at a dollar a pound (as we already have on Long Island), and all the appurtenances and appointments of a genuine English trouting privilege and a genuine English 'outing.' [Illustration: FIG. 238.—Small Mouth Black Bass, _Micropterus dolomieu_ Lacépède. ] "In those future days, not long hence to come, some venerable piscator, in whose memory still lingers the joy of fishing, the brawling stream which tumbled over the rocks in the tangled wildwood, and moistened the arbutus and the bunchberries which garnished its banks, will totter forth to the velvet edge of some peacefully flowing stream, and having seated himself on a convenient point in a revolving easy-chair, placed there by his careful attendant, cast right and left for the semblance of sport long dead. "Hosts of liver-fed fish rush to the signal for their early morning meal, and from the center of the boil which follows the fall of the handfuls thrown in my piscator of the ancient days will hook a two-pound trout, and play him hither and yon, from surface to bottom, without disturbing the pampered gourmands which are gorging themselves upon the disgusting viands; and when he has leisurely brought him to land at last, and the gillie has scooped him with his landing-net, he will feel in his capacious pocket for his last trade dollar, and giving his friend the tip, shuffle back to his house, and lay aside his rod forever."