174 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
puzzling. It is not easy to account for its presence in certain 
waters, and its absence from neighbouring and similar ones. 
For example, in my native parish of Mochrum, Wigtownshire, 
there are ten natural lakes, from two hundred acres down to one 
acre in extent. Some of these are basins scooped out of the 
glacial till, others are depressions in the prevailing Lower 
Silurian rock beds. Pike swarm in eight of these lochs, and 
are wholly absent from two of them. Long may they remain 
so, for their room is occupied by numbers of very good trout. 
Still more remarkable is the capricious distribution of pike in 
the southern uplands of Scotland. They infest most of the 
waters, both running and still, but here and there occur lakes, 
such as Loch Grennoch, abounding in trout and char, and the 
two Glenhead lochs in Glentrool, where no pike are found. 
The fry, of course, find their way wherever a rill runs or 
a drain trickles, but some of these hill lochs are situated so 
high that the pike therein must be descended from an ancestry 
established when the land levels were different. In such an 
elevated and desolate region, the presence of these fish can 
scarcely be attributed to the agency of man. 
Pike, nearly allied as they are to the Sa/monide, ought to 
be excellent food, and some there be that profess to find them 
so. As for me, I have tried hard to relish them in 
various forms, but have never been able to overcome 
a strong repugnance to the flesh. Nor is this prejudice, as it 
might easily be in a mere matter of taste, over which reason 
exercises no control. This was proved one day in a very 
practical way at my own table, where pike are sabu. I helped 
myself to what appeared to be excellent fried fillet of cod; 
the first mouthful was unaccountably nasty ; I looked more 
closely at the fish and detected a thin forked bone, unmistakable 
sign of pike. And pike it was; my son having been 
disporting himself on the lake that day, had persuaded the 
cook to serve some of his spoil. Therefore, despite the 
authority of many eulogists, my opinion of pike is this : 
Pike as food. 
