THE PIKE OF FABLE AND FANCY 5 



after long years the sensation of fear arising in the 

 boy angler at his first sight of a pike, prowling all 

 solitary, in stealthy pursuit of a victim, past the bush 

 by which he sits watching the float, which, like 

 Joseph's coat, is of many colours. 



This instinctive aversion is based very largely 

 upon exaggerated tales of cruelty and prowess, but 

 the bad name which the pike inherits, coupled with 

 the known tendencies of its nature and the forbidding 

 appearance characteristic of the breed, may well 

 account for public opinion with regard to a fish which 

 has been called a freshwater shark, a wolf, and a 

 tiger. Nature, in fact, made the pike a predatory fish 

 of the first order, and it must take the consequences 

 of the evidence which true and false witnesses have 

 combined to heap upon its name. To be known as a 

 devourer of ducks, moorhens, rats, and every kind of 

 fish, and to be suspected of assaults upon quadrupeds 

 and mankind itself, are sufficient to make the name 

 bad indeed. Punch's pike which flew at the immortal 

 Briggs and barked like a dog was, after all, but an 

 embodiment of the simple faith of many generations. 



That the disappearance of the smaller wild-fowl 

 is caused by pike admits of no question, and dear 

 old Izaak Walton was not perhaps so very credulous 

 when he accepted the stones of older writers now 



