242 THB PIKE. 



belly ; the forked bones in the nether parts are however some- 

 what troublesome; by far the best parts are the cuts over the 

 ribs where these do not occur. The moderate sized fish, from 

 four to eight pounds are by far the best tasted ; those taken in 

 clear waters are usually the best flavoured, and the females are 

 considered superior to the males. After spawning both male and 

 female are thin and ill-flavoured ; and in many waters during the 

 summer months they acquire a rank and disagreeable taste as well 

 as smell, from a particular kind of weed somewhat resembling 

 fennel that Walton terms the pickerel weed, which, when 

 they think proper to adopt a vegetable diet, it seems they feed 

 upon. 



Mr. Yarrell mentions that some old pikes have the back green, 

 and the flesh near the vertebral column of the same colour, and 

 that these possess a very high reputation for their edible merits ; 

 none of these fish have ever come to my hook or even sight, so I 

 conclude, like the fox when he found the grapes to be beyond his 

 reach and perhaps like him, that they owe their reputation solely 

 to their extreme rarity. 



Some difference of opinion prevails with respect to ordinary du- 

 ration of a pike's existence. According to Bacon his life does not 

 exceed forty years, though he considers him the longest liver of all 

 fresh water fishes ; which also accords with the opinion of Pliny, 

 though the latter does not mark out any precise limit. Rzaczynsky, 

 and also Pennant mentions a pike attaining to the age of ninety 

 years ; but which is a mere death in infancy as compared to the 

 aquatic Methuselah of Kaiserslautern before alluded to.* Certain 

 however it is, that to whatever age a pike's existence may extend, 

 it can only be prolonged by sacrificing the lives of a great many 

 other fishes ; and the immense number of fish that these voracious 

 tyrants will consume at a single meal if they have the fortune to 

 catch them is truly wonderful : those therefore who think of in- 

 troducing these fishes into waters not already supplied with them 

 would do well to ponder first, whether they will in their own prop- 

 er persons counterbalance for the numbers of fish they will most 

 certainly destroy. Where these fishes have been introduced into 

 trout streams in Ireland, that were formerly stocked to abundance 



* SM up. p. 235. 



