THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 135 



as I told you, " The belly has no ears when hunger conies 

 upon it." 



The pike is also observed to be a solitary, melancholy, and 

 a bold fish : melancholy because he always swims or rests 

 himself alone, and never swims in shoals or with company, 

 as roach and dace and most other fish do ; and bold, because 

 he fears not a shadow, or to see or be seen of anybody, as 

 the trout and chub and all other fish do. 



And it is observed by Gesner, that the jaw-bones and hearts 

 and galls of pikes are very medicinable for several diseases ; 

 or to stop blood, to abate fevers, to cure agues, to oppose or ex- 

 pel the infection of the plague, and to be many ways medicin- 

 able and useful for the good of mankind : but he observes, 

 that the biting of a pike is venomous, and hard to be cured. 



And it is observed, that the pike is a fish that breeds but 

 once a year ; and that other fish, as namely loaches, do breed 

 oftener, as we are certain tame pigeons do almost every month; 

 and yet the hawk, a bird of prey, as the pike is of fish, breeds 

 but once in twelve months.'"" And you are to note, that his 

 time of breeding, or spawning, is usually about the end of 

 February, or somewhat later, in March, as the weather proves 

 colder or warmer ; and to note, that his manner of breeding 

 is thus : a he and a she pike will usually go together out of a 

 river into some ditch or creek, and that there the spawner 

 casts her eggs, and the melter hovers over her all that time 

 that she is casting her spawn, but touches her not.t 



* Walton here hints at a dispensation of Providence, by which animals of 

 prey are rendered less productive of their species than others, particularly than 

 those living things that furnish food for man. There are numerous excep- 

 tions. Animals, that come under the denomination of " vermin," are in many 

 instances exceedingly prolific ; far more so than the useful cow and sheep. The 

 salmon, so valuable as an edible, does not spawn more frequently than the pike ; 

 nor does the pheasant breed oftener than the hawk, though it does more pro- 

 ductively. Animals of prey abound in the uninhabited forest and desert, and 

 if some are very rare, and others extinct, in populous countries, we must impute 

 the fact to the destructive devices of man, rather than to limited natural powers 

 of productiveness. ED. 



t Very late discoveries of naturalists contradict this hypothesis concerning 

 the generation of fishes, and prove that they are produced by the conjunction 

 of the male and female, as other animals are. See the " Philosophical Trans- 

 actions," Vol. XL VIII. Part II., for the year 1754, p. 870. H. 



[Discoveries later still, in the shape of repeated experiments, have proved 

 that Walton was more correct than the " Philosophic Transactions" for the 

 year 1754. The hypothesis that fish we specifically refer to river fish" are 

 produced by the conjunction of the male and female, as other animals are," is 

 rejected by all eminent modern naturalists. No sexual conjunction takes place, 

 The female fish deposits her spawn or ova, which the male fish fecundates by 



