PART 4. 



THE PIKE. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE PIKE AND HIS CHARACTERISTICS. 



Ancient writers on the pike — Description of the f ike — His habits — His 

 ferocity and voracity — Tench as food or doctor — The haunts of pike — fack 

 in a baited swim — Weight a/id growth of pike — Jack ftshini^ in public 

 waters, a contrast — The first English writer on pike and pike fishing — The 

 gander and the pike — Pike in ancient times — Pike on the table — Different 

 methods of jack fishing. 



" He loves no streams, but hugs the silent deeps. 

 And eats all hours, and yet no house he keeps." 



So sang Theophilus Franck a good many years ago, when 

 writing of " that mercenary, the lucit or pike." And all 

 writers, both in prose and poetry, that have taken this fish 

 as a text, are pretty well agreed in the general character they 

 give him. They looked upon his formidable teeth, his 

 wicked eyes, and his villainous aspect as being quite suffi- 

 cient to inspire any amount of terrible description ; even the 

 very look and sound of his name they found to be suggestive 

 of voracity and ferocity. Indeed, the very first writer who 

 mentions the pike — viz., the Latin poet Ausonius, who, 

 writing about the fourth century — says, 



" The wary Luce, 'midst wrack and rushes hid, 

 The scourge and terror of the scaly brood." 



and Pope, too, sings of him in much the same strains when 

 he says, 



" And pikes, the tyrants of the watery plains." 



" The Innocent Epicure," written about the year 1697, con- 

 tains the following lines: 



" Go on, my muse, ne.xt let thy numbers speak 

 That mighty Nimrod of the streams, the pike." 



These two or three examples go to prove that even old 



B 



