DECEMBER. 



PIKE FISHING, 



By George Lindesay. 



It has constantly been maintained, by learned and unlearned alike, 

 that the pike is not a native of these islands, but imported pro- 

 bably by the monks in the reign of Henry VIII. The date of 

 the introduction of this great and greedy fish is even fixed at 

 1537, and one common form of a popular couplet is that 



" Turkeys, carp, hops, pickerel and beer 

 Came into England all in a year.'' 



If the pickerel, or pike — the fish has as many aliases as a burglar 

 — is indeed a naturalized alien, he has certainly made himself 

 thoroughly at home, for there is no one of his compatriot fishes, 

 save perhaps the perch, with his prickly dorsal fin, that the pike 

 does not dearly love and eagerly feed upon. 



The learned have now " changed all this." The pike, they 

 maintain, is as much a native-born British fish as the eel or the 

 gudgeon. The savant has discovered his pre-historic bones in 

 abundance in the marshes near Ely ; though this indeed may only 

 prove that he lived once, may have grown extinct with the cave- 

 bear and mastodon, and has been reintroduced by the monks in the 

 Middle Ages. The late introduction of the pike into England has 



