130 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART r. 



Sir Francis Bacon, in his History of Life and Death, observes 

 the Pike to be the longest lived of any fresh- water fish ; and yet 

 he computes it to be not usually above forty years ; and others 

 think it to be not above ten years : and yet Gesner mentions a 

 Pike taken in Swedeland, in the year 1449, with a ring about 

 his neck, declaring he was put into that pond by Frederick the 

 Second, more than two hundred years before he was last taken, 

 as by the inscription in that ring, being Greek, was interpreted 

 by the then Bishop of Worms.* But of this no more ; but 

 that it is observed, that the old or very great Pikes have in 

 them more of state than goodness ; the smaller or middle-sized 

 Pikes being, by the most and choicest palates, observed to 

 be the best meat : and, contrary, the Eel is observed to be the 

 better for age and bigness. 



All Pikes that live long prove chargeable to their keepers, 

 because their life is maintained by the death of so many other 

 fish, even those of their own kind ; which has made him by some 

 writers to be called the tyrant of the rivers, or the fresh-water 

 wolf, by reason of his bold, greedy, devouring disposition ; which 

 is so keen, as Gesner relates, A man going to a pond, where it 

 seems a Pike had devoured all the fish, to water his mule, had 

 a Pike bit his mule by the lips ; to which the Pike hung so fast, 

 that the mule drew him out of the water ; and by that accident, 

 the owner of the mule angled out the Pike. And the same Gesner 

 observes, that a maid in Poland had a Pike bit her by the foot, as 

 she was washing clothes in a pond. And I have heard the like 

 of a woman in Killing worth pond, not far from Coventry. But I 

 have been assured by my friend Mr Segrave, of whom I spake to 

 you formerly, that keeps tame Otters, that he hath known a Pike, 

 in extreme hunger, fight with one of his Otters for a Carp that 

 the Otter had caught, and was then bringing out of the water. I 

 have told you who -relate these things ; and tell you they are 



called Pickrell-weed, and other glutinous matter, which, with the help of the sun's heat, 

 proves, in some particular ponds, apted by nature for it, to become Pikes. ist edit. 



* Walton probably quoted from memory. The story is in his favourite writer, Hake- 

 will, who in his " Apologie of the power and providence of God," fol. Oxf. 1635, P. I. 

 p. 145, says, " I will close up this Chapter with a relation of Gesner's, in his Epistle to 

 the Emperor Ferdinand, prefixed before his booke De Piscibus, touching the long life 

 of a Pike, which was cast into a pond or poole neare Hailebrune in Swevia, with this 

 inscription ingraven upon a collar of brasse fastened about his necke. Ego sum ille^ 

 piscis huic stagno omnium primus impost 'tus per mundi rector is Frederici Secundi 

 tjtanus, 5 Octobris, anno 1230. I am that fish which was first of all cast into this poole 

 by the hand of Fredericke the Second, governour of the world, the fift of October, in the 

 yeare 1230. He was againe taken up in the yeare 1497, and by the inscription it appeared 

 he had then lived there 267 yeares." E. ' 



