386 



that he had known a Pike, in extreme hunger, fight with 

 one of his otters for a Carp that the otter had caught, 

 and was then bringing out of the water ; and, with the old 

 adage, adds, " it is a hard thing to persuade the belly, 

 because it has no ears." A woman in Poland had her 

 foot seized by a Pike as she was washing clothes in a pond ; 

 and the same thing is said to have happened at Killingworth 

 pond, near Coventry. The present head-keeper of Rich- 

 mond Park was once washing his hand over the side of a 

 boat in the great pond in that park, when a Pike made a 

 dart at it, and he had but just time to withdraw it. Mr. 

 Jesse adds, " that a gentleman now residing at Weybridge 

 in Surrey, walking one day by the side of the river Wey, 

 near that town, saw a large Pike in a shallow creek. He 

 immediately pulled off his coat, tucked up his shirt-sleeves, 

 and went into the water to intercept the return of the fish 

 to the river, and to endeavour to throw it out upon the bank 

 by getting his hands under it. During this attempt, the 

 Pike, finding he could not make his escape, seized one of 

 the arms of the gentleman, and lacerated it so much that the 

 marks of the wound are still visible." 



Pliny considered the Pike as the longest lived, and likely 

 to attain the largest size, of any fresh-water fish. Pennant 

 refers to one that was ninety years old ; but Gesrier relates 

 that, in the year 1497, a Pike was taken at Hailbrun in 

 Suabia, with a brazen ring attached to it, on which were these 

 words in Greek characters : "I am the fish which was 

 first of all put into this lake by the hands of the Governor 

 of the Universe. Frederick the Second, the 5th of October 

 1230." This fish was therefore two hundred and sixty- 

 seven years old, and was said to have weighed three hun- 

 dred and fifty pounds. The skeleton, nineteen feet in 

 length, was long preserved at Manheim as a great curiosity 



