THE PIKE. 55 



eat ; and, therefore, the fish may be considered the more respectable 

 gourmand of the two. When the appetite of the pike is on, he is 

 furious ; when it is appeased, he is scarcely to be tempted. 

 Practised trollers are well aware of this, and thoroughly under- 

 stand the difference between the "runs" when he is hungry and 

 in earnest, and when he is neither one or the other. When not 

 stimulated by hunger, he is anything but voracious, and will mouth 

 a, bait and play with it for a quarter of an hour, in sheer sport, 

 without the slightest intention of swallowing it. In this condition, 

 he will often allow himself to be hauled about, and quietly pulled 

 up to the surface of the water, and then, with a careless nap of his 

 tail, he coolly drops the bait from his jaws, and lazily rolls down 

 again into deep water. 



This daintiness of food has been often noticed by very ancient 

 writers. Several of the scholastic divines, in their general sum- 

 maries of matters of natural history mention the fact. They 

 sometimes go very minutely into his peculiarities of taste. They 

 maintain there are some particular articles they are passionately 

 fond of; among these are the following: A swan's head and 

 shoulders, a mule's lip, a Polish damsel's foot, a gentleman's hand, 

 tender kittens before their eyes are opened, and the fleshy parts of 

 a calf's head. There are likewise things to which he evinces a 

 great dislike. " In the midst of a banquet of frogs, throw him a 

 toad, and he turns from it loathing ; put a slimy tench near his 

 muzzle, and he will recoil from the nauseous creature ; and if com- 

 pelled by strong necessity, as the scarcity of all other more 

 acceptable food, to dine on a perch, he holds it shudderingly under 

 water, at the greatest possible distance transversely in his jaws, 

 whilst any life remains, and having next carefully put down the 

 offensive spines on the back, proceeds to pouch it with address, but 

 leisurely, and not without manifest reluctance. The sticklebacks 

 are held in yet greater abomination than perch by old pikes, and 

 not without good reason, seeing the havoc they commit amongst 

 the young and unwary pickerels. It is only by personal suffering, 

 that fish, any more than men, buy wisdom ; our young pikes no 

 sooner begin to feel hunger, and to find they have large mouths, 

 well furnished with teeth, provided on purpose to cater for it, than 

 they proceed at once to make essay upon the bodies of the smallest 

 fish within reach. These are commonly the gaserostei or stickle- 

 backs, who, on observing the gaping foe advancing against them, 

 prepare for the enc9unter by bristling up their spines in instinctive 

 readiness to stick in his throat, instead of going smoothly down 

 into his stomach." 



We shall make no apology for inserting a few additional obser- 

 vations from Mr. Goose's "Natural History of Eish," relative 

 to the voracity and modes of feeding of the pike. 



" The voracity of the pike is shown by a circumstance of no 

 infrequent occurrence in Sweden. Large perch often swallow the 

 baited hooks of stationary night-lines, and then enormous pike 



