THE PIKE. 13 



eral other things may also have to be taken into account 

 before a true decision can be arrived at on that point. 

 Shortly then, as this seems to be a question that a lot of 

 interest is evinced in, we may say that a forty pounder is a 

 tip-topper, and one not likely to be caught above once in 

 twenty years, whereas if a lucky fisherman did manage to 

 fairly and squarely land, with rod and line, a brace of pike 

 that exceeds Mr. Jardine's pair in size, why, all I can say is, 

 that not only should the fish be carefully set up, but the 

 angler as well, and he ought to, at the very least, have a 

 niche all to himself in Westminster Abbey, with a brass 

 plate setting forth his achievement. Some anglers seem to 

 think that jack and pike are two separate and distinct fish ; 

 that there is a distinction if not much difference between 

 them. Years ago it was an accepted rule to call this fish, 

 if under four or five pounds in weight, a jack, and anything 

 over the latter weight a pike, but gradually this distinctive 

 title has been given up, and all of them, no matter how 

 large or how small, have of late years been more often called 

 jack than pike; so the reader must bear in mind that in 

 using the two names in the following pages, I refer to one 

 and the same fish. We are told by the learned in such mat- 

 ters that a jack will reach eight inches in length during his 

 first year, after hatching from the ova ; that during his sec- 

 ond year he will go up to fifteen inches ; and in his third, 

 total up to twenty, or possibly he might scale as much as 

 four pounds when three years old. After this he increases 

 at the rate of from two or three pounds a year until he is 

 twelve years old ; after which he decreases slightly and gets 

 still more thin every year, as old age creens on him. 

 Naturalists have given him a lease of life extending to forty 

 years, and say that he is the longest lived of any of our fresh 

 water fish ; and that when one is captured in the last stages 

 of consumption, long, lanky, and thin, it is a very old fish. 

 I remember a friend of mine once capturing a jack in the 

 Ouse, some three of four miles below Huntingdon, that was 

 the most extraordinary I ever saw; it was no less than 38 

 inches in length, it had a tremendous head and mouth, and 

 yet it scaled only 6^ lb. I never saw such an eel-like body 

 attached to a pike before ; its teeth were wonderfully long, as 



