16 HULL SCIENTIFIC AND FIELD NATURALISTS’ CLUB. 
are very hardy, and will live a long time in an aquarium, several 
remaining in my possession for over a year, feeding on worms and 
vermicelli. 
The PikE has been by many writers termed the freshwater 
shark, but the title is, in my opinion, undeserved and misleading, 
for the habits of the pike and those of the dreaded monster of the 
deep are about as dissimilar as they well could be. In the first 
place the shark roves about and plays on the surface of the 
ocean, while the pike remains as motionless as a cat while 
watching its prey, and indeed its sudden rush, or “run,” as it is 
called in angling parlance, in every way bears a striking resemblance 
to the final and generally fatal spring of one of the felidee. Another 
great point of difference between the two is that sharks always 
hunt in packs, while in the case of the pike each individual 
depends solely and entirely on his own exertion in order to supply 
himself with food. The size of pike varies unquestionably with 
the size and amount of the food supply of their habitat. In the 
Hull we find pike from six to eight pounds not very uncommon, 
while occasional specimens exceed the latter weight. The largest 
fish from the river that has come under my observation weighed 
twenty pounds eight ounces. The following incidents from my 
note-book testify to the voracity of the pike. While spinning a 
Devon minnow one day I felt a very feeble tug, and looking 
round to see what caused it, to my no little astonishment, saw 
that a pike, about four inches long, had seized the knot 
which attached the running line to the trace, and was trying his 
very best to make off with it, nor did he leave go until I had had 
time to call two friends. who were with me, to witness the 
circumstance. On another occasion, in my younger days, when 
a friend and myself, armed with that destructive and direful 
apparatus known as the snickle, sallied forth to give any 
unfortunate fish what might not inaptly be called a short shrift 
and a long rope, we came across a pike trying to swallow an eel, 
while the latter was endeavouring with all its might to get away 
from its captor. We quickly decided the point by snickling 
them both, and found on laying the eel alongside the pike that 
the former was the longer by some three inches. The struggle of 
the eel to escape made the pike, which weighed about half-a- 
pound, sway violently to and fro. A friend of mine baited 
a line with a dead stickleback, from whose back he did 
not remove the characteristic spines, put it in a drain hard by, 
and left it all night. In the morning, on his coming to ascertain if 
he had caught anything, he pulled out a pike some 2lbs. in weight. 
He thought nothing of the circumstance, as we often catch pike 
on sticklebacks, until he essayed to get out the hook, when he 
