ANCIENT AND MODERN ANECDOTES 15 



be the columns of a London newspaper of that period, in 

 which it had appeared as an item of interesting news. 

 I am not certain as to whether the pike would have been 

 able to swallow that parish clerk, if he had kept hold ; but, 

 anyhow, we find it impossible to swallow pike tales of that 

 magnitude. 



In the lonely tarns of Sweden, waters that do contain 

 enormous perch and pike, it is a very frequent occurrence 

 to take pike that are never hooked at all. The native fisher- 

 men set a series of curious and unusually strong fixed or 

 night lines, baited in some instances with huge worms or 

 bunches of garbage ; perch of four and five pounds weight 

 swallow these baited hooks, and huge pike in turn swallow 

 the perch ; and although the pike are rarely or never 

 hooked themselves, yet the prickly fins and the hard scales 

 of the perch set so fast in the throat of the swallower that 

 the fishermen have a difficulty to drag them asunder. 

 One old traveller and sportsman who made Sweden his 

 objective, left it on record that the very largest pike he 

 ever got, and he went far and wide after them, and got 

 into communication with well-known men and districts 

 for several years, was a forty-pounder, the head of which, 

 I believe, is now preserved in England. 



The pike of solid fact sometimes get themselves into 

 strange and alarming difficulties, but I question if a 

 stranger situation was ever created than that witnessed by 

 a boatman on Loch Tay. One day he saw a commotion in 

 the water, a violent struggle was going on between two 

 pike. He promptly gaffed them, and found such an 

 extraordinary state of affairs that he sent them exactly 

 as gaffed to Mr. F. Buckland, the distinguished naturalist, 

 who took a cast of them. 



The two jack weighed between them a little over nineteen 

 pounds, as near as possible each being the same size ; the 

 head of one, beyond the gill covers, was firmly wedged in 

 the throat of the other ; and it was the violent struggle to 

 free themselves that attracted the attention of the boatman. 



