THE PIKE 



discarded. Better naturalists than he heard without 

 scepticism that two geese had been taken at one time 

 from the interior of a pike, that a swimming dog was 

 not safe from it, that a maid washing clothes in a 

 pond had her foot seized by a pike, and that a 

 mule, lowering its head to drink, was held prisoner 

 by one which hung on with such grip that it was 

 drawn out of water by the quadruped. 



The old local history books furnish the materials 

 for many of these narratives of ferocity, and some of 

 them are very circumstantial. Sir John Hawkins, for 

 example, repeats, from a London paper of 1705, an 

 account of the draining down of a pool in Shropshire. 

 It had not been fished for ages, and, as a suggested 

 consequence, a gigantic pike of upwards of 170 Ib. 

 was discovered, and hauled up by a rope in the 

 presence of hundreds of spectators. It was ' thought 

 to be the largest ever seen.' To this statement was 

 added as an anti-climax that some time previously 

 the clerk of the parish was trolling in the pool and 

 was jerked into it by the sudden force of the strike at 

 the bait, ' and it doubtless would have devoured him 

 also had he not by wonderful agility and dexterous 

 swimming escaped the dreadful jaws of this voracious 

 animal.' Had there been a fish of such weight, and 

 the rod and tackle sufficiently strong, the occurrence 



