THE PIKE. 57 



weight of seventy or eighty pounds. In the spring of 1843, a pike 

 was exhibited in London, at a fishmonger's in Piccadilly, which was 

 caught in some private preserve. He was immensely long, and 

 was ticketed to weigh sixty-nine and a half pounds. How far 

 such statements are to be believed one can scarcely determine ; 

 because no one seems to have taken the trouble properly to 

 authenticate any remarkable instance. Some time in, or about 

 the year 1820, a pike, said to be thirty-six pounds, was taken out 

 of Whittlesea Mere, in Huntingdonshire, and exhibited alive in a 

 small brewing tub at Trinity College, Cambridge, on the morning 

 of the audit day. Whether 'or not he was served up at the 

 capital dinner which occurs on this occasion, we do not remember ; 

 but perhaps the ravages of thirty years may have spared some old 

 " blue-gown" who may have a more perfect recollection of the 

 circumstances. 



But what are these pigmies, compared with the monster whose 

 carcase was preserved at Mannheim, and may be there yet for 

 anything we know to the contrary ? Part of the story has been a 

 pet affair with most of the book-makers on fishing, from Walton 

 downward ; but all of them have shrunk from the entire narration 

 in sheer despair, it is presumed, of being able to stuff it down the 

 throats of their readers. Monsieur Passon Maisonneuve, in a 

 third edition of his "Manuel du Pecheur," has no such foolish 

 scrupulosity ; so he ventures on the following story, citing Eleazar 

 Bloch, who published a magnificent work on ichthyology, Bunder 

 the auspices of the then King of Prussia, as his authority for the 

 singular story. "In 1497, a person caught, at Kaiserslautern, 

 near Mannheim, a pike which was nineteen feet long, and which 

 weighed three hundred and fifty pounds ! His skeleton was pre- 

 served for a long time at Mannheim. He carried round his neck a 

 ring of gilded brass, which could enlarge itself by springs, and 

 which had been attached to him by order of the Emperor, Frederick 

 Barbarossa, two hundred and sixty-seven years before" ^ Monsieur 

 Pesson Maissonneuve concludes the anecdote with this apposite 

 and truly pathetic explanation " What a tremendous quantity of 

 animals, more weak and feeble than himself, he must have de- 

 voured, in order to nourish his enormous bulk during so long a 

 series of years." 



In March, if very warm, and in April, these fish leave their 

 accustomed deep and quiet haunts and seek for gullies, creeks, 

 broad ditches, and shallow reedy or pebbly places, in order to 

 deposit their spawn, winch they leave near the surface to be acted 

 upon by the rays of the sun. It is said, but, perhaps, without 

 much truth, that when thus obeying the impulses of nature, such 

 is their lazy and absorbed condition, that they may be taken by the 

 hand, much in the same way that trout are occasionally tickled. 



The spawning season occupies from two to three months ; 

 the younger female fish, of about three or four years old, taking the 

 lead ; and when they have all been all safely delivered, the dow~ 



