154 PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH 



writes in one of his spirited ballads. Pennant, whose respect- 

 ability no one will presume to question, refers to a pike of ninety 

 years old. Pliny considered it as the longest lived, and likely 

 to reach the greatest age of any fresh-water fish ; whilst Sir 

 PVancis Bacon, agreeing in this view, limits its probable maxi- 

 mum to forty years. Sir Roger L'Estrange has even gone to 

 the length of complaining of this 'pike longevity,' which, as he 

 quaintly observes, 'is a pity, he being an absolute tyrant of the 

 fresh water as the salmon is the king thereof.' 



Dr. Badham chronicles the age of one ' historic pike,' in 

 the College-pond at Cambridge : 



Almost every piece of water, says he, maintains some such tra- 

 ditionary patriarch. Not long ago one of these hale old water-foxes 

 was to be seen in a parallelogram college-pond at Cambridge, 

 who still continued to champ the green duckweed with a smack, 

 and to flounder heavily amongst the green water-lilies, on his 

 veteran flank as he used to do in our pupilary days some twenty 

 years back. He has seen out many a generation of bed-makers 

 and ten-year men. The lodge has had many a new caput, and the 

 kitchen many a new cook, since he first swam there ; yet amidst 

 all these culinary changes, no maeson has been permitted to lay 

 fraudulent hands upon him ; his safety is supposed to be identified 

 with the interests of the college ; and thus protected by common 

 consent from hook and every harm, want has from generation to 

 generation been carefully met by his trusty nomenclator, a whistling 

 gyp. A note adds : ' Since putting the above into type, we have 

 learned with regret that burglarious hands have carried off an 

 historic pike from the fellows' pond of the same college. May some 

 ex ossibus ultor from his ribs, stick in that fellow's throat for his 

 crime !' 



The famous story of the pike with the brass ring round its 

 neck that was put into the Kaiserwag Lake by one of the 

 German emperors, and there lived to the age of 267 years, 

 is probably familiar to us all, as it has been a staple commodity 

 with the book writers and book makers of every generation 

 since the sixteenth century. I think I put the coping stone to 

 the edifice which fact and fiction have conspired to rear 

 on this foundation by producing from the old black-letter 



