

K*S 



THE MUSKELLCN'GE. 





-•^ 



PIKE, MUSKELLUNGE AND PICKEREL. 



I will give thee for thy food 



No fish that useth in the mud, 



But trout and pike, that love to swim 



Where the gravel from the brim. 



Through the pure streams may be seen. 



Beaumont and Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess, i6ii. 



The goodly well-grown trout, I with my angle strike. 

 And with my bearded wire, I take the ravenous pike 



Drayton, The Muses Elysiii 



I, Nymphal IV^. 



/^NE of the most ancient among the families of fresh-water fishes, is 

 ^""^that of the Pike — the Esocida: — a group of physostomous fishes, 

 closely related to the flying-fishes, and the cyprinodonts, and not very dis- 

 tantly related to the Salmon tribe. This family contains only the genus 

 Esox, which embraces five species, all natives of North America, one, the 

 Pike, being a resident of the Old World, as well. Geologists tell us that 

 remains of the Pike are found in abundance in the quartemary deposits of 

 Europe, and that this, or closely related species,occur in the diluvial marl 

 of Silesia, and in the chalks of the CEningen region. The wide distribu- 

 tion of the Pike throughout the northern regions of Europe, Asia and 

 America, indicates that this species was in existence many centuries ago, 

 before the three continents became so widely differentiated as they are at 

 the present time. 

 / The Pike being the oldest, the most widely distributed, and the best 

 "-■ Jcnown member of its tribe, shall serve as the text for this chapter, and 

 the type with which the related species shall be compared. So few. 

 however, have been the observations in this country, and so much has 

 Esox luciiis been confused with the other species of the genus, that it 



