PIKE. 437 



foot seized by a Pike as she was washing clothes in a pond ; 

 and the same thing is said to have happened at Killing-worth 

 pond near Coventry. The present head-keeper of Rich- 

 mond Park was once washing his hand over the side of a 

 boat in the great pond in that park, when a Pike made a 

 dart at it, and he had but just time to withdraw it. Mr. 

 Jesse adds, that " a gentleman now residing at Weybridge 

 in Surrey, walking one day by the side of the river Wey, 

 near that town, saw a large Pike in a shallow creek. He 

 immediately pulled off his coat, tucked up his shirt-sleeves, 

 and went into the water to intercept the return of the fish 

 to the river, and to endeavour to throw it out upon the bank 

 by getting his hands under it. During this attempt, the 

 Pike, finding he could not make his escape, seized one of 

 the arms of the gentleman, and lacerated it so much that the 

 marks of the wound are still visible." 



Pliny considered the Pike as the longest lived, and likely 

 to attain the largest size, of any fresh-water fish. Pennant 

 refers to one that was ninety years old ; but Gesner relates 

 that, in the year 1497, a Pike was taken at Halibrun in 

 Suabia, with a brazen ring attached to it, on which were these 

 words in Greek characters : "I am the fish which was 

 first of all put into this lake by the hands of the Governor 

 of the Universe, Frederick the Second, the 5th of October 

 1230." This fish was therefore two hundred and sixty- 

 seven years old, and was said to have weighed three hun- 

 dred and fifty pounds. The skeleton, nineteen feet in 

 length, was long preserved at Manheim as a great curiosity 

 in natural history. The lakes of Scotland have produced 

 Pike of large size, one taken in Loch Ken in Galloway 

 weighed sixty-one pounds, and one from Loch Lomond 

 seventy-nine pounds ; some of the Irish lakes are said to have 

 afforded Pike of seventy pounds ; but it is observed, says 

 honest Isaac Walton, " that such old or very great Pikes 



