412 The Scyphophori, Haplomi, and Xenomi 
widely distributed of all fresh-water fishes, being found from 
the upper Mississippi Valley, the Great Lakes, and New England 
to Alaska and throughout northern Asia and Europe. It 
reaches a weight of ten to twenty pounds or more, being a 
large strong fish in its way, inferior only to the muskallunge. 
In England Esox lucius is known as the pike, while its young 
are called by the diminutive term pickerel. In America the name 
pickerel is usually given to the smaller species, and sometimes 
even to Esox luctus itself, the wcrd being with us a synonym 
for pike, not a diminutive. 
Of the small pike or pickerel we have three species in the 
eastern United States. They are greenish in color and banded 
or reticulated, rather than spotted, and, in all, the opercles 
as well as the cheeks are fully covered with scales. One of 
these (Esox reticulatus) is the common pickerel of the Eastern 
States, which reaches a respectable size and is excellent as 
food. The others, Esox americanus along the Atlantic seaboard 
and Esox vermiculatus in the middle West, seldom exceed a foot 
in length and are of no economic importance. 
Numerous fossil species are found in the Tertiary of Europe, 
Esox lepidotus from the Miocene of Baden being one of the 
Fig. 821.—Mud-minnow, Umbra pygmwa (De Kay). New Jersey. 
earliest and the best known; in this species the scales are much 
larger than in the recent species. The fossil remains would seem 
to indicate that the origin of the family was in southern Europe, 
although most of the living species are American. 
The Mud-minnows.—Close to the pike is the family of Um- 
bride, or mud-minnows, which technically differ from the pikes 
only in the short snout, small mouth, and weak dentition. The 
