THE PIKES AND THEIE COUSINS 



' Lucius obscuras ulva caenoque lacunas, 

 Obsidet : Hie nuUos mensarum ad usas, 

 Fervet fumosis olido nidore popinis.' 



The French, who are said to have had a pike over two hundred 

 years old, which wore earrings, and came to the ringing of a bell, 

 called it ' Lus.' In Italy it is ' Luccio,' and it is very probable 

 that when the Athenians spoke of I/ycus sixteen hundred years 

 ago they referred to the pike, the WasserwoK of the Germans. 

 The Eomans were masters of England several centuries. They 

 left little impression on the people, but the pike was called 

 ' Luce,' as late as in the time of Chaucer. 



' Full many a fat partricke had he in mewe, 

 And many a Breme and many a Luce in stewe.' 



In England the name became a symbol in heraldry, and here 

 doubtless we get the name Lucy, Lucius and many more. Shake- 

 speare refers in derision to the escutcheon of the Lucys, a fact which 

 the Baconians seemed to have overlooked in their attempts to 

 unseat the Bard of Avon by discovering that Lord Bacon, not 

 William Shakespeare, hated the home and name of Lucy. 



In England's lakes, rivers and ponds, as well as in America 

 or elsewhere, the pike, jack, pickerel, call binn what you wiU, 

 is the Wasserwolf. He preys on any living thing from a duck- 

 ling to a swallow, and from a mouse to a frog. Everything is 

 game to this wolf of the pond that moves at night, hides in the 

 watery sedges, sneaks upon his prey and devastates and terrorizes 

 the world of the inland seas. I dare not venture on the size the 

 pike attains. It appears to be mainly a question of food supply. 

 Buckland said, ' From the days of Gesner down, more Ues, to put 

 it in very plain language, have been told about the pike than 

 any other fish in the world ; and the greater the improbability 

 of the story, the more particularly is it sure to be quoted.' 



This of course refers to that time-honoured story of the pike 

 of the Emperor Frederick 11 that was taken in 1497 in Hailprun, 

 Suabia. It was nineteen feet in length, and was so heavy that a 



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