THE PIKES AND THBIE COUSINS 



the pike with a ' wonderful natural Heat,' which enables it to 

 eat and digest anything. The mule was a clever angler, but I 

 cannot permit a British mule to defeat a Yankee cow which, I 

 was told, took a big pickerel in Lake Superior by wading into 

 the water and threshing her tail about, whereupon a large thirty- 

 pound pickerel dashed at it, became entangled in its long hairs, 

 and so frightened the cow that she turned and ran ashore, 

 dragging the fish into the farmyard where it was received and eaten 

 in triumph : not by the cow but by the cow's owner. I could 

 teU how in Arkansas they fish for the pike by bending down a 

 seventy-foot pine tree, the pickerel releasing it when it strikes, 

 the tree tossing the fish half a mile into the back country. There 

 are other experiences which I might give, but it is not weU to 

 boast of one's country in a book to be published in Great Britain. 

 I have always held a suspicion that certain pike or pickerel 

 relish being caught. I fancy I obtained this impression, possibly 

 a Ubel, from one fish which when hooked came at me and almost 

 leaped into the boat. Yet the pike has some admirers. Beau- 

 mont and Fletcher in that ancient work The Faithful Shepherdess, 

 1611, writes : — 



' I will give thee for thy food no fish that useth in the mud, 

 But trout and pike that love to swim, 

 When the gravel from the brim 

 Through the pure streams may be seen.' 



I have taken pickerel iu the St. Lawrence with a fly and 

 have seen a number which made a gallant fight. 



The American pike has a wide range in North America, being 

 found in lakes, streams and rivers, a voracious ravenous fish, 

 pla3dng havoc with its betters and ready to take a big spoon 

 and a mouthful of feathers on any and aU occasions. 



It ranges all over Northern Europe, England, Eussia, and 

 probably in China and Siberia and south, at least as far as Con- 

 stantinople, and is at its best in England and Germany. Especially 

 in the latter, large and vigorous specimens have been taken, 

 while certaia pike are supposed to attain great age. 



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