132 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



years ; and others think it to be not above ten years ; and yet 

 Gesner mentions a pike taken in Swedeland, in the year 1449, 

 with a ring about his neck, declaring he was put into that 

 pond by Frederick the Second, more than two hundred years 

 before he was last taken, as by the inscription in that ring, 

 being Greek, was interpreted by the then Bishop of Worms.* 

 Eut of this no more but that it is observed, that the old or 

 very great pikes have in them more of state than goodness ; 

 the smaller or middle-sized pikes being, by the most and 

 choicest palates, observed to be the best meat : and, contrary, 

 the eel is observed to be the better for age and bigness. 



All pikes that live long prove chargeable to their keepers, 

 because their life is maintained by the death of so many other 

 fish, even those of their own kind ; which has made him by 

 some writers to be called the tyrant of the rivers, or the fresh- 

 water wolf, by reason of his bold, greedy, devouring disposi- 

 tion ; which is so keen, as Gesner relates a man going to a 

 pond, where it seems a pike had devoured all the fish, to 

 water his mule, had a pike bit his mule by the lips; to which 



* The story is told (more correctly) by Hakewill, who, in his " Apologie of 

 the Power and Providence of God," fol. Oxf. 1635, part i. p. 145, says, " I 

 will close up this chapter with a relation of Gesner's in his epistle to the Em- 

 peror Ferdinand, prefixed before his booke De Piscibus, touching the long life 

 of a pike which was cast into a pond or poole near Hailebrune in Suabia, with 

 this inscription engraven upon a collar of brass fastened about his necke,' Ego 

 sum ille piscis hide stagno omnium primus impositus per mundi rectoris Frederick 

 Secundi manus, 5 Octobris, anno 1230.' I am that fish which was first of all 

 cast into this poole by the hand of Fredericke the Second, governor of the 

 world, the fifth of October, in the year 1230. He was again taken up in the 

 year 1497; and by the inscription, it appeared he had then lived there 2G7 

 H. 



