VORACITY OF THE PIKE. 77 



make a dash at a trout of fully equal size to itself, and seize 

 it across the body with his sharp teeth. The combat was 

 lively. The assailed trout made desperate though ineffectual 

 efforts to get rid of its ravenous enemy. After the lapse of 

 a couple of hours, the trout became altogether exhausted, on 

 which the pike, beginning with the head, commenced gorging 

 his prey. The meal lasted three whole days, or rather, it was 

 not until the expiration of that time, that the pike had suc- 

 ceeded in swallowing the whole body. The process of digestion 

 must have continued very much longer, as for a week after- 

 wards the fish had a very swollen appearance, and was hardly 

 able to move from the spot even when poked with a stick." 



Baron C. J. Cederstrom was also eye-witness to extraordi- 

 nary voracity in the pike. After relating the results of some 

 experiments made with the young of more than one species of 

 fish, he says : 



" On the 1 2th of June, after the larger portion of the fry 

 were preserved in spirits, there remained four young pike 

 namely, two of about twenty, and two of some twenty-six milli- 

 metres in length. That I might be the better enabled the next 

 day to witness the amusing spectacle afforded by their gluttony, 

 they were left without food, and a covering was, as usual, 

 placed for the night over the vessel in which they were kept. 

 At five o'clock on the following morning, when I removed 

 the covering, they were all there ; but one quarter of an hour 

 afterwards, when I again inspected their place of confine- 

 ment, one of the larger of them had swallowed its somewhat 

 smaller comrade, or rather, it had partially gorged it ; for the 

 half of the body, which moved for a second or two, still 

 protruded beyond the jaws of the assailant, who was shape- 

 less, and obliquely distended. In the highest degree 



