140 THE COMPLETE ANGLER 



divers pikes are bred after this manner, or are brought into 

 some ponds some such other ways as is past man's finding 

 out, of which we have daily testimonies. 



Sir Francis Bacon, in his History of Life and Death, 

 observes the pike to be the longest lived of any fresh water 

 fish ; and yet he computes it to be not usually above 

 forty years ; and others think it to be not above ten years ; 

 and yet Gesner mentions a pike taken in Swedeland, in the 

 year 1449, with a ring about his neck, declaring he was 

 put into that pond by Frederick the Second, more than 

 two hundred years before he was last taken, as by the in 

 scription in that ring, being Greek, was interpreted by the 

 then Bishop of Worms.* But of this no more ; but that it 

 is observed, that the old or very great pikes have in them 

 more of state than goodness ; the smaller or middle-sized 

 pikes being, by the most and choicest palates, observed to 

 be the best meat : and, contrary, the eel is observed to 

 be the better for age and bigness. 



All pikes that live long prove chargeable to their 

 keepers, because their life is maintained by the death of 

 so many other fish, even those of their own kind ; which 

 has made him by some writers to be called the tyrant Df 

 the rivers, or the fresh-water wolf, by reason of his bold, 

 greedy, devouring disposition ; which is so keen, as Gesner 

 relates a man going to a pond, where it seems a pike had 

 devoured all the fish, to water his mule, had a pike bit 

 his mule by the lips ; to which the pike hung so fast, that 



* The story is told (more correctly) by Hakewill, who, in his 

 Apologie of the Power and Providence of God, fol. Oxf. 1635, part i. 

 p. 145, says, " I will close up this chapter with a relation of 

 Gesner's, in his epistle to the Emperor Ferdinand, prefixed before 

 his booke De Piscibus, touching the long life of a pike which was cast 

 into a pond or poole near Hailebrune in Suabia, with this inscription 

 ingraven upon a collar of brass fastened about his necke. ' Ego sum 

 ille piscis huic slagno omnium primus impositus per mundi rectoris 

 Frederici Secundi manus, 5 Oclobris, anno 1230.' I am that fish 

 which was first of all cast into this poole by the hand of Fredericke 

 the Second, governour of the world, the fifth of October, in the year 

 1230. He was again taken up in the year 1497 ; and by the inscrip- 

 tion, it appeared he had then lived there 267 veares." H. 



