Habits of the Pike. 305 



and fowl of some sort, he is quite open to receive 

 contributions from the vegetable, or, if you please, 

 from the mineral kingdom. It is astonishing, on 

 cutting open a pike, to find, in addition to quite a 

 miscellaneous assortment of animal matters, what 

 a variety of foreign substances he has imported 

 substances which only the sorest need or a literally 

 omnivorous disposition could ever have tempted 

 him to appropriate. But if thus 



" True glutton-like his stomach rules his eyes," 



he has need of a good digestion ; and certainly 

 Nature has been kind to him in this respect, for she 

 has not given him the desire to devour without the 

 ability to benefit. In his own person he is shark 

 and ostrich combined. If nothing comes amiss to 

 him when feeding, nothing that he swallows seems 

 to disturb his internal economy. His powers of 

 assimilation are marvellous, and dyspepsia is to 

 him unknown. But if he can feast when he gets 

 the chance, he can fast when necessity compels; 

 and we may charitably believe that it is his pre- 

 monition of a fast, or his experience of one, that 

 whets his appetite for a feast. 



If credence is to be given to all accounts of the 

 longevity of the pike, verily he eats to some pur- 

 pose. Every author on angling feels bound to 

 record the story of the Mannheim fish, which tradi- 



