1 64 PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH. 



And that other fine trick, 

 Which our artists call snap with a goose or a duck ; 



Will kill two for one if you have good luck ; 

 The gentry of Shropshire do merrily smile, 



To see a goose and a belt the fish to beguile. 1 



On this subject I may, perhaps, quote from the ' Book of 

 the Pike.' I do not know whether the Shropshire gentlemen 

 still include huxing amongst their favourite sports ; but it is 

 not very long since it was practised on a reservoir near Glasgow, 

 and also on the Scotch lakes Monteith and Lochmaben. An 

 amusing account of an incident which happened to a Dumfries- 

 shire farmer in the neighbourhood of the latter, is given by 

 McDiarmid in his ' Sketch Book ; ' it is also quoted by Professor 

 Rennie in the 'Alphabet of Angling' : 



Several years ago, he says, the farmer kept a gander, which 

 not only had a great trick of wandering himself, but also delighted 

 in piloting forth his cackling harem to weary themselves in cir- 

 cumnavigating their native lake, or in straying amid forbidden 

 fields on the opposite shore. Wishing to check this vagrant habit, 

 he one day seized the gander just as he was about to spring into 

 the water, and tying a large fish-hook to his leg, to which was 

 attached a portion of a dead frog, he suffered him to proceed upon 

 his voyage of discovery. As had been anticipated, this bait soon 

 caught the eye of a pike, which, swallowing the hook, not only 

 arrested the progress of the astonished gander, but forced him to 

 perform half-a-dozen somersaults on the face of the water ! 



For some time the struggle was most amusing, the fish pulling 

 and the bird screaming with all its might ; the one attempting to 

 fly, and the other endeavouring to swim, from the invisible enemy ; 

 the gander the one moment losing and the next regaining his 

 centre of gravity, and casting between whiles many a rueful look 

 at his snow-white fleet of geese and goslings, who cackled out 

 their sympathy for their afilicted commodore. At length victory 

 declared in favour of the feathered combatant, who, bearing away 

 for the nearest shore, landed on the green grass one of the finest 

 pikes ever caught in the castle-loch. This adventure is said to 

 have cured the gander of his propensity for wandering ; but on 

 this point we are inclined to be a little sceptical. 

 1 Barker's Art of Angling. 



