148 THE PRACTICAL FISHERMAN. 



When is a pike full grown ? Shakespeare makes use of the latter term in 

 the following manner (" The Merry Wives of Windsor," act i., sc. 1) : 



SLENDER. A gentleman born, master person ; who writes himself armigerom any 

 bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation armigero. 



SHALLOW. Ay, that I do and have done any time this three hundred years. 



SLENDER. All his successors gene before him have done't ; and all his ancestors that 

 come after him may; they may give the dozen white luces in their coat. 



SHALLOW. It is an old coat. 



SIR HUGH EVANS. The dozen white louses do become an old coat well; it agrees 

 well passant ; it is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love. 



SHALLOW. The luce is a fresh flh. 



The armorial bearings of the Lucies contain figures of three pike, not 

 a dozen. 



The pike is a fish of a respectably ancient history. Juvenal, in the Fifth 

 Satire, speaks of what seems to be our Esox lucius ; in his denunciation 

 of Cryspinus he says, ' ' You must put up with a muddy eel, sister of the 

 slender snake, or with a pike bred in the Tiber, spotted by winter ice, fed 

 with the ordure of the common shore, and used to swim through the 

 drains as far as the Sabruria.' ' That pike thrive in lakes or rivers polluted 

 by sewer refuse is a certain fact. Witness the magnificent stock of 

 these fish in Cumberland Lake, Windsor Park, the water of which receives 

 the effluent of the adjacent sewage farm. 



Ausonius also refers to a fish, most probably identical with our pike. 



Lucius obf=curus ulva lacunas 



Obsidet: His null os menparum lectus ad usus 



Fumat fumoeis olido nidore popinis. 



The wary luce, midst wreck and rushes hid, 

 The scourge and terror of the scaly brood, 

 Unknown at friendship's hospitable board, 

 Smokes midst the smoky tavern's coarsest food. 



In England the pike has, of course, been valued, and, indeed, considered 

 in earlier times as an important gastronomic adjunct. It is recorded that 

 at a feast given by Archbishop Neville to Edward IV., no less than 608 jack 

 formed a considerable part of the banquet, together with porpoises and 

 seals, and Willoughby tells us they were kept in wooden watercoops at 

 Cambridge. Camden also refers to their being caught in the Thames. In 

 his description of Southwark, speaking of the stews and ponds near 

 the river's bank, he says: "They are to feed pike and tenches fat and to 

 scour them from their muddy fennish taste. Here have I seen pike's 

 paunches opened with a knife to show their fatness." Moreover, Blakey 

 informs us that about the close of the thirteenth century jack was so dear 

 that few could afford to eat it. Yarrell says the price was double that 

 of salmon and ten times that of either turbot or cod. In Henry VIII. 's 

 time these fish fetched as much again as house lamb in February, and a 

 very small pickerel was worth more than a fat capon. It is certain, 

 therefore, that his tyrannic majesty was valued considerably above his 



