228 ESOCID.E. 



daily, can give you no information, nor indeed data, on which 

 to found an opinion, except that they are " very like a whale," 

 or a Trout, as it may be. I mention this here en passant, 

 because I am perfectly prepared to find myself violently assailed, 

 and pronounced utterly incompetent to prepare a hook of this 

 nature, because I have not included " that delicious fish, the 

 pride of our southern waters, well known to the real sportsman, 

 the noble ' Pampolin,' or the unrivalled ' Welshman,' as it may 

 be, in my list of game fishes/' But I have made up my mind 

 to peaceful submission, deeming it quite enough to have inves- 

 tigated the identity of what it amuses southern gentlemen to 

 call " Trout," and Western New Yorkers " Bass " and " Sheep's- 

 head," without troubling my head about mere provincial bar- 

 barisms. I believe the " Pampolin " to be of the INIackerel 

 family, and the " Welshman," which is described as a bold 

 biter at small fish, worms, and the like, to be a Percoid fish, 

 analogous to Rock-Bass {Centrarchus jEneas), or perhaps a 

 Corvina, analogous to the Malashegane, or Sheep's-head of the 

 lakes. 



The Common Pickerel — to return to my subject — does not in 

 general exceed five pounds, and in most districts this is consi- 

 derably above his average, which does not, I think, go beyond 

 two and a half or three pounds, but they are occasionally taken 

 in the smaller lakes, and in some few of the more sluggish 

 streams, of infinitely larger size, even so far, it is said, as to 

 twelve and fifteen pounds' weight ; but such instances are rare, 

 even if they can be relied upon as facts, — which I am some- 

 what inclined to doubt, thinking that they have probably been 

 mistaken for some other cognate species. 



