THEIR VORACITY. II 



head, they cannot see and catch the tench. But, 

 like carp, tench in hot weather delight to lie close 

 to the surface of the water, basking in the Tench 

 sunshine. There exists, however, a fond and 

 superstition that accounts for the pike's pl 

 leniency towards the tench on the ground that 

 the latter is the pike's physician ; and Camden, 

 in his Britannia, asserts that he " has seen the 

 bellies of pikes which have been rent open, have 

 their gaping wounds presently closed by the touch 

 of the tench, and by his glutinous slime perfectly 

 healed up." Moses Brown writes in his Piscatorial 

 Eclogues : 



" The pike fell tyrant of the liquid plain, 

 Howsoe'er by raging famine pined, 

 The tench he spares a medicinal kind ; 

 For when, by wounds distrest and sore disease, % 

 He courts the salutary fish for ease, 

 Close to his scales the kind physician glides, 

 And sweats a healing balsam from his sides." 



Whether, as a matter of taste, pike sometimes 

 decline to lunch or dine off tench is, I think, an 

 open question ; I say sometimes, because, in or 

 about the year 1881, when fishing at Kingsfleet, 

 near Felixstowe, the late Mr. John Knechtli caught 

 three pike, from 19 Ibs. to 20 Ibs. each, which were 

 preserved and " set-up " by S. Sanders, who sent 

 me the contents of the pikes' stomachs, which con- 

 sisted of partly digested tench, the heads, tails and 

 vertebrae of some showing they had been, when 

 alive, fish from 2 Ibs. to 3 Ibs. weight. 



That pike, when hungered, will gorge almost any- 

 thing, is well known rats, puppies, kittens, voracity 

 ducks, and fish of their own kind have of P ike 

 often been found inside them ; and there are 



