154 PIKE 



been taken. I have received it from the north of Ireland, 

 through the kindness of the Earl of Enniskillen; and Mr. 

 Thompson mentions several lakes in that kingdom in which it 

 abounds. It is recorded also as a native of several rivers in 

 Scotland. Over the larger part of the continent of Europe it 

 is well known, and it is in abundance throughout Sweden and 

 Norway to a high degree of latitude; where in the latter 

 country, according to Linna'us, it is caught and preserved to 

 serve as a principal portion of the subsistence of the poor 

 people in winter. And although it is strictly a fish of fresh 

 water, so that it can only live for a short time, and in a sickly 

 condition in that which is altogether salt, it is also found in 

 the upper portion of the Baltic, where the water is sufficiently 

 diluted to allow it to thrive. Spain is not wholly without the 

 Pike, as has been said by some; and it is an inhabitant of the 

 temperate and colder regions of Asia, even so far as China, as 

 also in America. It seems therefore a matter of surprise that 

 this fish is scarcely mentioned, if at all, by the ancient writers 

 of Greece and Rome; in the former of which we meet with 

 no reference to it; and in the latter, if it be the Esox mentioned 

 by Pliny, his only notice of it is, that in the Rhone it has been 

 known to weigh a thousand pounds; which assertion, derived 

 perhaps from popular report, is sufficiently wide of the probable 

 truth as to encourage the doubt of its being the fish now known 

 by the same name. Yet as a native of the Tiber it must have 

 been known to the people of Rome; but their writers seem 

 generally to have disregarded the natural living habits and 

 instincts of the inhabitants of the waters, and to have viewed 

 fishes as worthy of notice only so far as they ministered to 

 the luxuries of the table, or again as they contributed some 

 occult qualities to the impostures of medical magicians, who 

 abounded in the city, and to the absurd pretensions of whom 

 the higher classes of ancient Rome were accustomed to lend a 

 willing ear. Ausonius, writing in the fourth century, mentions 

 it as a fish of the Moselle; but this he does only to record a 

 commonplace piece of wit, in reference to its vulgar name of 

 Lucius; which signified one that was born in the early morning 

 light, or, as interpreted, under favourable circumstances, and 

 it was therefore greatly valued by the Romans, for having been 

 borne by many illustrious men of that empire; in contrast with 



