146 THE PRACTICAL FISHERMAN. 



the perch by assimilation, but the crayfish is sometimes crushed by its 

 powerful jaws; and if not completely dissolved in the stomach, is yet 

 so far digested as to admit of faecal ejection in the ordinary manner. 

 Gorge hooks have been repeatedly taken from the maw, and some time 

 ago it was my good fortune to extract a sixpence from a 31b. fish. I at 

 the time remarked that a piece of rusted steel hung from a hole drilled in 

 one side of the coin, and I suppose this was the remains of a hook. The 

 piece of silver had evidently been used as an artificial bait, and not a bad 

 one, either. This style of bait is very killing for mackerel. I may add 

 that the sixpence was greatly discoloured by the action of the gastric juice. 

 Perhaps there is hardly anything, from a piece of red flannel to a boy's leg, 

 that, like the ostrich, this fish does not consider himself equal to assi- 

 milating for his sustenance, and its voraciousness is of course in com- 

 parison. Even the quantity of food naturally consumed is enormous. 

 Jesse gives an instance in which it was ascertained by actual experiment, 

 that eight fishes of ordinary size consumed 800 gudgeon in three weeks. 

 I quite believe in the probability of the Arabian Nights' story of the Fish 

 and the Diamond, after witnessing the extraordinary variety of food the 

 jack swallows. Dr. Crull, in his "Present State of Muscovy (1698)," 

 actually maintains that a child was found in the stomach of a large pike, 

 caught in the Volga about that time, and Ehondeletius speaks of an in- 

 stance in which a pike took a fancy to the nose of a friend's mule, and 

 on the animal starting back from where it was drinking Esox lucius was 

 secured. 



It is very clear to me that the comparative absence of any sense but 

 vision and hearing leads the pike into the most egregious mistakes in his 

 selection of food. The natural fierceness and impulsive ferocity of the 

 creature, coupled with a fearfully voracious appetite, notwithstanding his 

 splendid visual faculties, plunge him into all sorts of difficulties, some of 

 which are of considerable danger. His brain, unlike the carp, is but 

 sparely developed, and it is not at all an extraordinary occurrence for a 

 pike to leap on dry land, pursuing a bait with lighting-like speed, re- 

 gardless and unaware of consequences. 



A remarkable structure in the eye of this fish has been discovered 

 according to Couch, by a Mr. Drummond (Charlesworth's Magazine of 

 Natural History, vol. 2), which appears to show a special force of 

 measuring distances by sight. " In no British fishes," the same author 

 remarks " are the three bones (of these ololiths) on each side so decidedly 

 visible." 



Some of the earlier writers on natural history have credited this fish 

 with great refinement of taste. I can hardly accord with them, 

 however. It is maintained that there are some particular things 



