THE PIKE. 135 



evening, and eaten by ourself, and a few quiet 

 members of the Society of Friends, to whose com- 

 panionship (as. they to ours) we have been always 

 much attached. Indeed, we have named an arti- 

 ficial fly in honour of Dr. Martin Barry. 



Mr. Jesse has recorded that eight pike, weighing 

 five pounds a-piece, consumed nearly eight hundred 

 gudgeon in three weeks. Dr. Plot relates that a 

 pike seized the head of a swan as she was feeding 

 in Lord Gower's Canal at Trentham, with her neck 

 beneath the water, and gorged so much of it that 

 both creatures were killed, for the servants, on 

 perceiving something peculiar in the aspect or at- 

 titude of the swan, took boat, and found not only 

 the prey but the pike dead he having caught an 

 unconscious Tartar. Women have had their feet 

 seized by these fish while washing clothes, and the 

 present head keeper of Richmond Park was on one 

 occasion washing his hands over the side of a boat 

 in the great pond, when a pike made a dart at them, 

 and he had but just time to withdraw into upper 

 air, a proof that people engaged in aquatic excur- 

 sions should never wash their hands over the gun- 

 wale, but rather keep them in their breeches pockets. 

 There is a gentleman now residing at Weymouth 

 in Surrey, who enjoys the privilege of showing the 

 marks of a pikers teeth upon his arm. These were 

 inflicted, however, not by aggression on the part 

 of the dumb creature, but in self-defence, for the 

 gentleman in question, while walking one day by 

 the side of the River Wey, had endeavoured to 

 seize a pike, which (as the event occurred before 

 any suspicion of chartism in the country) we hold 



