132 THE COMPLETE ANGLER, [PART I. 



time some frogs are observed to be venomous, so thoroughly 

 washed her, by tumbling her up and down in the water, that he 

 may devour her without danger. And Gesner affirms, that a 

 Polonian gentleman did faithfully assure him, he had seen two 

 young geese at one time in the belly of a Pike. 7 And doubtless a 

 Pike in his height of hunger will bite at and devour a dog that 

 swims in a pond ; and there have been examples of it, or the 

 like ; for as I told you, " The belly has no ears when hunger 

 comes upon it." 



The Pike is also observed to be a solitary, melancholy, and a 

 bold fish : melancholy, because he always swims or rests him- 

 self alone, and never swims in shoals or with company, as Roach 

 and Dace, and most other fish do ; and bold, because he fears not 

 a shadow, or to see or be seen of anybody, as the Trout and Chub, 

 and all other fish do. 



And it is observed by Gesner, that the jawbones, and hearts, 

 and galls of Pikes, are very medicinable for several diseases, or 

 to stop blood, to abate fevers, to cure agues, to oppose or expel 

 the infection of the plague, and to be many ways medicinable and 

 useful for the good of mankind : but he observes, that the biting 

 of a Pike is venomous, and hard to be cured. 



And it is observed, that the Pike is a fish that breeds but once 

 a year ; and that other fish, as, namely, Loaches, do breed oftener : 

 as we are certain tame Pigeons do almost every month ; and yet 

 the Hawk, a bird of prey, as the Pike is a fish, breeds but once 

 in twelve months. And you are to note, that his time of breeding, 

 or spawning, is usually about the end of February, or, somewhat 

 later, in March, as the weather proves colder or warmer : and to 

 note, that his manner of breeding is thus : a he and a she Pike 

 will usually go together out of a river into some ditch or creek ; 

 and that there the spawner casts her eggs, and the melter hovers 

 over her all that time that she is casting her spawn, but touches 

 her not.* 



VARIATION. 



7 Here, in ihejirst edition, follows this passage: " And he observes that in Spain 

 there are no Pikes, and that the biggest are in the Lake Thracimane in Italy, and the 

 next, if not equal to them, are the Pikes of England." 



* Very late discoveries of naturalists contradict this hypothesis concerning the genera- 

 tion of fishes, and prove that they are produced by the conjunction of the male and 

 female, as other animals are. See the Philosophical Transactions, vol. xlviii. part ii. for 

 the year 1754, page 870. H. 



" The ingendring and breeding of the like fish as aforesaid, I have noted to be in this 

 manner, sometime in May, and sometime in June, as the season happeneth to fail out 

 apt for generation, the water by God's providence having then a natural warmth to per- 

 forme the same, the male fish by course of nature, will chase about the female, seeking 



