217 



PIKE.* 



SOME years ago a pike was observed lying dead 

 on the water in Bottisham Park, having been choked 

 in its attempt to swallow one of its own kind nearly 

 as big as itself, which was sticking out of its mouth. 

 A similar instance of voracity in the miller's thumb 

 has been already mentioned in a former part of this 

 work.f 



Mr. Selby also tells me, in proof of the voracity of 

 this species of fish when urged by hunger, that he 

 has at various times hooked pike, when fishing with 

 minnows as bait, and had his tackle, and a consider- 

 able part of the line carried off, yet has taken the 



appears, in the region of the gills, as if pinched in by the fingers : 

 the greatest thickness of the body is scarcely more than half the 

 depth : the head is smaller, and of a different form, somewhat 

 approaching to triangular, when viewed laterally : the snout, in 

 advance of the eyes, is not so obtuse ; the profile less curved, and 

 never becoming vertical ; the mouth is not so low down, and the 

 lower part of the head ascends obliquely to meet it: the barbules 

 are a trifle shorter; the suborbital spine larger and more conspicu- 

 ous : the eyes are very high, the intervening space contracted into 

 a narrow elevated ridge. 



The fins, and fin-ray formula, as well as the colours, are the 

 same in both. 



The habits also of these two kinds of groundling are, as far as 

 I have observed, the same. The largest specimens I have ob- 

 tained were the large-headed variety, and measured three inches 

 four lines in length : these were taken in fish-ponds at Ely. 

 * ESOJC lucius, Linn. t See p. 210. 



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