196 NOTES ON FISH AND FISHING. 



assimilate the very banks of his aqueous home. His 

 ferocity is almost on a par with his voracity, and there 

 are many stories, quite worthy of credit, of his attacking 

 persons bathing, and animals which have come to drink 

 in the water. He may not " bark," though " Mr. Briggs," 

 of immortal memory, says he does ; but he certainly can 

 " bite " with very great effect. Woe betide the hand he 

 gets within his jaws and operates on with his horrible 

 canine teeth ! Have a care when you are disengaging 

 hooks from his mouth. He " snaps " at you as viciously 

 as a melancholy-mad dog. How marvellous his powers of 

 digestion ! He needs no "patent pepsine" to assist him. 

 It is said, and I believe said truly, that the jack has a 

 larger supply of gastric juice, and that of a more active 

 quality, than any other creature. When five years old, 

 an authority tells us, a jack will eat every fortnight his 

 own weight in gudgeons or other fish. His powers of 

 assimilation must therefore be first class. He can digest 

 the tackle he is caught with as well as the bait. He 

 can dissolve a cork float or the lead of a gorge-hook with 

 ease. I believe he could dispose of a trimmer or ginger- 

 beer bottle or a corkscrew without much difficulty, and 

 digest the hardest books ever written, Butler's Analogy, to 

 wit, or Locke on the Human Understanding, or even a deed 

 of conveyance drawn up by the longest-winded attorney 

 alive. Once, however, I saw a jack thoroughly puzzled. In 

 Wilton Park the head keeper took me to see a jack of about 

 8 lbs. in a stew (in two senses of the word), with another 

 of about 3 lbs. partly down his gullet. He told me that 

 the fish had been in difficulties two days, but that the 

 three-pounder was gradually going down. On the follow- 

 ing day it had disappeared, with the exception of about 



