4 PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH. 



size of the gape, very similar to the corresponding bones in the 

 viper conformation. 



We have, however, in the British Islands and on the Con- 

 tinent, only ' one recognised species ; ' which species, according 

 to the author of ' British Fishes ' and some other writers, has 

 probably been 'acclimatised.' Personally I am rather disposed 

 to believe it to be indigenous ; but I willingly leave the point 

 to the researches of the curious in such matters, and to the 

 students, if such there be, of mediaeval ichthyology. If the 

 fish was really an importation, it could not, at any rate, have 

 been a very recent one, as pike are mentioned in the Act of 

 the 6th year of Richard II., 1382, and also by Chaucer in the 

 well-known lines : 



Full many a fair partrich hadde he in mewe, 



And many a breme, and many a Luce in stewe. . . , 



One of the names by which the pike was formerly known, 

 now obsolete, or at any rate used only as a diminutive, is 

 ' pickerel;' which again, when arrived at a certain, or rather un- 

 certain age of discretion, becomes a 'jack;' to be finally inducted 

 into the full dignity of pikehood. The term 'pike' has been 

 supposed to take its origin in the Saxon word piik, sharp- 

 pointed, in reference to the peculiar form of the pike's head, 

 thus, by the way, furnishing an argument in favour of the 

 indigenous character of the fish, in contradiction to Yarrell's 

 ' importation ' theory. Skinner and Tooke would derive it from 

 the French word/f?ztt, on account, they say, of the sharpness 

 of its snout. It is the brocJiet or brocheton, lance or lanceron, 

 and becquet of France, the gtidda of the Swede, and the gcdde 

 or gei of Denmark, which latter term is nearly identical with 

 the lowland Scotch gedd. Ingenious derivations of all these 

 names have been discovered by philologists, but they arc, 

 for the most part, somewhat fanciful. The luccio or luzzo of 

 the Italians, and the term luce or lucie ('white lucic ' of Shake- 

 speare and of heraldry) are evidently derived from the old 

 classical name of the fish, Indus. Here again, however, we 



