THE PIKE. 243 



with the latter fish, they have all but extirpated them; so that many 

 formerly well known and celebrated trout streams are totally 

 spoilt as such by the almost total annihilation of the race through 

 the rapacity of the new settlers; although the latter have increas- 

 ed in immense quantities. But the Irish fishermen are by no 

 means pleased with the change. In the river Wandle also, in 

 which honest Izaak used to catch his lusty trouts, such indeed as 

 would fill six reasonable bellies, the pike have now obtained al- 

 most the sole dominion, very few trouts being now to be found 

 there. 



Perch appear to be the best fish for inhabiting the same waters 

 with the pike, being better able to stand on the defensive on ac 

 count of their numerous spines, which must render them by no 

 means an agreeable morsel to swallow, and must most assuredly 

 prove very uneasy of digestion afterwards. But when hungry a 

 pike will not scruple to lay hold of a perch, which indeed is often 

 successfully used as a bait for trimmers, and yet pickerels or jack 

 are sometimes killed by swallowing the stickleback ; but this it 

 seems is caused by these greedy juveniles bolting them alive as 

 then their prickles stand erect, for if little they are desperate 

 and game to the last ; whilst the perch, being previously killed 

 and swallowed head foremost, the spines are smoothed down even 

 with the body, and so prove comparatively harmless. 



But notwithstanding the chief food of the pike consists of such 

 fishes as he can manage to capture or subdue, yet he is sometimes 

 so ravenous as to seize upon any thing that will come in his way ; 

 devouring with avidity frogs, rats, mice, young ducks, and other 

 water fowl ; and many young kittens and puppies that are prema- 

 turely doomed to a watery grave, often find a sepulchre in the maw 

 of a hungry pike. Gesner indeed affirms that a Polonian gentle- 

 man did once faithfully assure him that he had seen two geese at 

 one time in the belly of a pike. The same writer also states that 

 a pike once seized upon the lip of a mule, while the owner was 

 watering it, and held on eo tenaciously, that the mule lugged him 

 out of the water, and by that means his master possessed himself 

 of the pike. Daniel relates a similar occurrence when a dog was 

 lapping the water in a pond near Warnham in Sussex, in which 

 two gentlemen were angling at the time, to whose no small won- 

 der the pike kept his hold so firmly, and the dog resisted so stout- 

 ly that the fish, weighing upwards of seven pounds, was eventually 



