46 HINTS ON ANGLING. 



-deep mountain tarns; and Ireland, that land of exaggera- 

 tion, boasts of fish of the extraordinary weight of seventy 

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

 exhibited in London at a fish-monger's in Piccadilly, 

 which was caught in some private preserve. He was 

 immensely long, and was ticketed to weigh sixty-nine 

 pounds and a half. 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 

 very remarkable instance. Sometime in or about the year 

 1820, a pike, said to be thirty-six pounds in weight, 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 that occasion, we do not remember ; but 

 perhaps the ravages of five-and-twenty 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 mon- 

 ster whose carcase was preserved at Mannheim, and may be 

 there yet for aught we know to the contrary? Part of 

 the story has been a pet affair with most of the book- 

 makers on fishing, from Walton downwards; 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 Pesson Maisonneuve, 

 however, in the third edition of his "Manuel du Pecheur," 

 has no such foolish scrupulosity ; and so he ventures on the 

 following story, citing Eleazar Bloch,* who published a 



* There is a splendid copy of Bloch's work in the library 

 at Arras. 



