92 ANGLING 



pounds, was taken out of Whittlesea Mere, in Hunting- 

 donshire, and exhibited alive in a small brewing tub 

 at Trinity College, Cambridge, on the morning of the 

 audit day. Whether or not he was served up at the 

 capital dinner which occurs on this occasion, we do not 

 remember ; but perhaps the ravages of thirty years may 

 have spared some old "blue-gown" who may have a 

 more perfect recollection of the circumstances. 



But what are these pigmies compared with the 

 monster whose carcase was preserved at Mannheim, and 

 may be there yet for anything we know to the contrary 1 

 Part of the story has been a pet affair with most of the 

 book-makers on fishing, from Walton downward; but 

 all of them have shrunk from the entire narration, in 

 sheer despair, it is presumed, of being able to stuff it 

 down the throats of their readers. Monsieur Pesson- 

 Maisonneuve, in a third edition of his Manuel du 

 PecJieur, has no such foolish scrupulosity; so he 

 ventures on the following story, citing Eleazar Bloch, 

 who published a magnificent work on ichthyology, under 

 the auspices of the then King of Prussia, as his 

 authority for the singular story. " In 1497 a person 

 caught, at Kaiserslautern, near Mannheim, a pike which 

 was nineteen feet long, and which weighed three 

 hundred and fifty pounds ! His skeleton was preserved 

 for a long time at Mannheim. He carried round his 

 neck a ring of gilded brass, which could enlarge itself 

 by springs, and which had been attached to him by 

 order of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, two hundred 

 and sixty-seven years before." Monsieur Pesson-Maison- 

 neuve concludes the anecdote with this apposite and 

 truly pathetic explanation : " What a tremendous 

 quantity of animals, more weak and feeble than him- 

 self, he must have devoured, in order to nourish his 

 enormous bulk during so long a series of years." 



In March, if very warm, and in April, these fish leave 

 their accustomed deep and quiet haunts and seek for 

 gullies, creeks, broad ditches, and shallow reedy or 

 pebbly places, in order to deposit their spawn, which 

 they leave near the surface to be acted upon by the rays 



