CHAPTER II. 



WATER-WOLVES. 



F water-wolves had nothing more 

 to recommend them than the 

 possession of the same amiable 

 characteristics of strength, fierce- 

 ness, and voracity as those of their 

 warm-blooded namesakes, they would by now 

 be as near extinction as their four-footed 

 prototypes. But the water-wolf or pike has 

 one immense merit, which, in spite of his 

 many vices, makes him worthy of even 

 more attention than he usually obtains 

 he is a most toothsome morsel when he has 

 made proper acquaintance with the culinary art. 

 His merit was so well acknowledged in early 

 times that that worthy monarch, Edward I., 

 who saw no reason why his subjects should be 

 left to the mercy of a " Fish Ring," and there- 



