102 JACK. 



yields a very large quantity of roe on the arerage, and the 

 young fish are not long in being hatched. Endowed with great 

 feeding power, pike grow rapidly from the first, attaining a length 

 of twenty-two inches. Before that period a young pike is called 

 a jack, and its increase of weight is at the rate of about four 



JACK IN HIS ELEMENT. 



pounds a year when well supplied with food. The appetite of 

 this fish is very great, and, from its being so fierce, it has been 

 called the pirate of the rivers. It is not easily satisfied with • 

 food, and numerous extraordinary stories of the pike's powers of 

 eating and digesting have been from time to time related. I 

 remember, when at school at Haddington (seventeen miles 

 from Edinburgh), of seeing a pike that inhabited a hole in the 

 " Lan^ Cram " (a part of the river Tyne), which was nearly 

 triangular* in shape, supposed to be the exact pattern of its 

 hiding-place, and which devoured every kind of fish or animal 

 that came in its way. It was hooked several times, but always 



