S54 PIKE AND OTHER COARSE FISH. 



The common stickleback, also a spine-armed fish, is in its 

 turn constantly swallowed both by pike and perch ; used for 

 bait for perch where minnows cannot be got, it is best, how- 

 ever, to cut the spines off, and specimens of the brightest colour 

 or red-throated are the most attractive. Although greedily 

 taken by the larger perch and small pike, it is probable, 

 notwithstanding, that the results of stickleback-swallowing, 

 especially in cases of small pickerel and young perch, not 

 unfrequently prove fatal to the latter. The sort of relation- 

 ship existing between the two families is thus amusingly 

 described by Dr. Badham, a propos of the pike : 



By old pikes, he says, sticklebacks are held in yet greater 

 abomination than perch, and not without good reason, seeing the 

 havoc they commit amongst young and unwary pickerels. It is 

 only by personal suffering, that fish any more than men, ever buy 

 wisdom; growing pikes no sooner begin to feel the cravings of 

 hunger, and to find that they have large mouths, well furnished 

 with teeth on purpose to cater for it, than they proceed to make a 

 preliminary essay upon the smallest fish within reach ; these are 

 commonly the gasterostei, or sticklebacks, who, observing the 

 gaping foe advance against them, prepare for the encounter by 

 bristling up their spines in instinctive readiness to stick in his 

 throat, instead, as he supposes, of going smoothly down into his 

 stomach. This induces a dreadful choking disease, which we 

 venture to call ' sticklebackitis,' by means whereof many a pro- 

 mising young jack is cut off /' cunabulis, 



'Piscator' alludes to this circumstance, and adds that as 

 long as they are alive they keep their prickles standing 'erect,' 

 'for,' says he, 'if little, they are desperate and game to the last.' 



If the pike is the tyrant of the water, the stickleback is 

 certainly its knight-errant. Now, with sheathed weapons and 

 glittering in green and purple, he tenderly woos the object of 

 his devotion, or armed cap-a-pie, patrols a watchful sentinel 

 before her nuptial bower. Now, he fiercely disputes with rival 

 claimants the possession of a favourite nook, or bristling with 

 spines, charges through the liquid plains in search of other 



