133 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



less 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 himself 

 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 calls 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 

 bitintr 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 oftcner, 

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

 the hawk, a bird of prey, as the pike is of fish, breeds but once 

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

 ing, or spawning, is usually about the end of February, or some- 

 what 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 mi Iter 

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

 touches her not. 



1 might say more of this, but it might be thought curiosity or 

 worse, and shall therefore forbear it ; and take up so much of 

 your attention, as to tell you, that the best of pikes are noted to 

 be in rivers, next, those in great ponds or meres, and the worst in 

 small ponds. 



But before I proceed further, I am to tell you that there is a 

 great antipatiiy betwixt the pike and some frogs ; and this may 

 appear to the reader of Dubravius, a bishop in Bohemia, who in 

 his book of Fish and Fish-ponds, relates what he says he saw 



