MALACOPTERYGII ABDOMINALES. 461 



France, for Paulus Jovius and Ausonius seem to think but 

 little of them. The pikes of Chalons were held in high re- 

 putation in the thirteenth century : Champier, who wrote in 

 1560, remarks, that even in his time, as well as in that of 

 Ausonius, the pike was despised at Bourdeaux, but that in 

 the rest of France a very different opinion was entertained 

 concerning it. 



Its liver is very good, but its eggs excite nausea, and even 

 violent purging. In some places it is said, indeed, that these 

 eggs are used as a cathartic. 



The pike is one of the most voracious and destructive fishes 

 living. " It is," says M. de Lacepede, " the shark of the 

 fresh waters; it reigns there a devastating tyrant, like the 

 shark in the midst of the ocean : insatiable in its appetites, it 

 ravages, with fearful rapidity, the streams, the lakes, and the 

 fish-ponds where it inhabits. Blindly ferocious, it does not 

 spare its species, and even devours its own young ; gluttonous 

 without choice, it tears, and swallows with a sort of fury, the 

 remains even of putrified carcasses. This bloodthirsty animal 

 is also one of those to which nature has accorded the longest 

 duration of years ; for ages it terrifies, agitates, pursues, de- 

 stroys, and consumes the feeble inhabitants of the waters 

 which it infests; and as if, spite of its insatiable cruelty, it 

 was meant that it should receive every advantage, it has not 

 only been gifted with strength, with size, with numerous 

 weapons, but it has also been adorned with elegance of 

 form, symmetry of proportions, and variety and richness of 

 colour." 



It is in streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds that this formid- 

 able fish is to be found ; it is never seen but accidentally in 

 the sea, and Kondelet informs us, that such as are taken by 

 chance in the mouth of the Rhine, or in the salt ponds which 

 border the Mediterranean, are dry, and without flavour. But 

 it has been found in almost all the fresh waters of Europe, 



