PIKE-PERCIT. 
39 
a little below Sodertelje. It is found in the Bay of 
Kiel", but only rarely, and it has probably migrated 
thither through the Eider Canal. From the lakes and 
lagoons of Schleswig-Holstein, however, thoughout Ger- 
many east of the Rhine, in the North of Italy, and from 
Finland south of the Arctic-circle 6 and the island-belt 
of the Gulf of Finland, it is spread over the whole of 
Eastern Europe as far as the Black Sea and the Caspian 
with their affluents. It prefers deep, clear and pure 
water, where the bottom is sandy or stony. On a clayey 
bottom where the water is turbid, it is seldom found, 
though Lloyd 0 and Lilljeborg assert that it occurs in 
places where the bottom is of this nature, in Lakes 
Wener and Karsholm. “It does not remain stationary 
in one place,” writes Mr. Limborg, “but wanders long 
distances alone. It generally keeps near the bottom, 
but at the approach of spring it swims nearer the sur- 
face, often quite close to the ice. After the spawning- 
season it keeps close inshore during a short part of the 
summer, then goes out into deep water and first returns 
to shallower water at the end of August or the begin- 
ning of September. All the winter it remains in deep 
water.” In temperament it is sluggish, and displays so 
little sagacity that it has given rise to the proverb, ’as 
silly as a pike-perch’ . Its movements in the water are 
also heavy and clumsy. As soon as it feels that it is 
a prisoner and has made one or two unsuccessful at- 
tempts to escape, it abandons itself to despair, so com- 
pletely that it is most often found floating on its back 
at the surface. When it is taken up from deep water, 
the air-bladder bursts with a sound like that of eruc- 
tation, and at the same moment it dies. It is not very 
tenacious of life and is one of the hardest fishes to keep 
alive; but with care at its capture and in a suitable 
vessel tilled with fresh water it can be conveyed long 
distances, as proved by its transportation from Germany 
to England, and from Galicia to the Rhine and Lake 
Constance, and also by the attemps made by Mr. TrybojvH, 
an official under the Board of Fisheries, to introduce 
it from Lake Oppmanna into Lake Rabelof and Ring 
Lake in Scania. In voracity the Pike-perch is little 
surpassed by its near relative, the Perch, and in its 
rapacity as well as in its strongly armed jaws Gess- 
ner who, in the sixteenth century, was the first to 
describe the Pike-perch, found such a close likeness to 
the Perch, that he gave it the name of Lucioperca. 
The food of the Pike-perch consists of small fishes, espe- 
cially the Smelt, which, like itself, inhabits deep water 
during the greater part of the year. Ekstrom, however, 
also found insects, worms, and grass in its stomach. 
The reason for the different accounts of the spawn- 
ing-season of the Pike-perch must depend on the fact 
that it lasts uncommonly long, which is perhaps con- 
nected with the fact that it is confined to the night- 
time. It begins as early as the end of April and often 
extends to the middle of June 0 . During this period 
the Pike-perch makes its way in shoals to stony reefs 
in open creeks or stony and sandy points along the 
shore 6 . It never spawns in water less than from 10 to 
16 feet deep. The roe, which is light in colour and 
very fine in proportion to the size of the fish — so fine, 
in fact, that more than 300,000 eggs have been counted 
in one single female — , is deposited on stones and water- 
plants to which it adheres. It is a remarkable fact that 
this fish is less numerous than one might expect from 
the number of its eggs. “The fertilization and hatching of 
the eggs of the Pike-perch, ’ says Mr. Limborg, the Inspec- 
tor of Fisheries, in Sodermanland, “labours under great 
difficulties, for if the female be put into the cauf before 
the roe is almost ready to be deposited, she dies before 
depositing the roe. In order to succeed in the fertilization 
of the roe, one must try to procure females in which the 
roe is so matured that it can be ejected by a slight 
pressure on the belly, immediately after the fish is taken 
out of the water.” Norback recommends the moistening 
of the parts near the vent with some drops of the milt, 
in order to facilitate the depositing of the eggs. Even if 
the fertilization succeeds, and sometimes even after the 
fry have left the eggs, it may happen that the attempt 
finally fails 5 '. The fry must, therefore, receive great 
“ Cf. M6bius and LIeincke, Fische cler Ostsee, p. 33. 
6 Cf. Malmgren, Krit. Ofvers. Finl. Fiskfauna , p. 2; and Reuter and Sundman, 1. c. 
c Anteckningar under ett tjuguarigt vistande i Skandinavien, I, p. 14. 
d Cf. Nagra fiskodlingsforetag i Skdne , dren 1883 och 1884. Malmohus Lans Iiushallningssallskaps Qvartalsskrift, 1884. 
e “To this rule,” writes Mr. Limborg, “Lake Yngaren forms a remarkable exception, for there the Pike-perch first begins to spawn when 
the spawning-season in all the other lakes of Sodermanland is over, and the spawning-season extends to the middle of July.” 
f . . . “often in very muddy water”: NorbAck, Fiskevdrd ocli Fiskafvel , p. 362. Cf. also Reuter, 1. c. 
(J Mr. Amtsberg of Stralsund had great success with the fertilization, and from the eggs deposited on Myriopliyllum he obtained “an 
enormous number of fry,” but the greater part of them died during the summer and only some hundreds were left alive. Vid. Max v. d. 
Borne, Fischzucht und Fischer ei, p. 277. 
