166 MASCALLONGE. 
mascallonge, ranging from twenty-one to forty-fonr 
pounds. Larger fish and far greater numbers may per- 
haps be taken in wilder waters, and, indeed, in some of 
the lakes in the remote parts of Canada these fish are 
innumerable. 
Their length, proportionally to their weight, is, in con- 
sequence of their peculiar shape, excessive ; a fish of 
twenty-five pounds' weight will measure forty-six inches 
in length by six in dej)th, and a fish of seventy pounds 
it is presumed would be over six feet in length. Although 
this is not quite equal to the great pike of Pliny, that 
weighed a thousand pounds, and was drawn out by a 
pair of oxen, and caught on a hook attached to an ox 
chain, it must be regarded by the most fastidious as 
respectable for the present degenerate days. If the 
accounts we receive are reliable, the pike of Europe, of 
which the old song erroneously says : 
" Turkeys, carps, hoppes, piccarel and beer 
Came into England all in one year," 
vastly surpass ours in size, a fish being taken in a pond 
near Stockholm with a brass ring round his neck, having 
an inscription to the efi'ect that he had been put into the 
pond by the hands of Frederick the Second in 1230, or 267 
years before. He weighed 350 pounds, and measured fif- 
teen feet, and his skeleton was a long time preserved at 
JVIanheim. The ring was arranged with springs so as to 
enlarge as he grew. The Shannon is said to have pro- 
duced a pike of ninety-two pounds, and Lock Spey one of 
one hundred and forty-six ; but, when reading of these 
accounts, I feel like the Yankee, who, when boasting of 
