154 
PIKE 
been taken. I have received it from the north of Ireland, 
through the kindness of the Earl of Enniskillen; and Mr. 
Thompson mentions several lakes in that kingdom in which it 
abounds. It is recorded also as a native of several rivers in 
Scotland. Over the larger part of the continent of Europe it 
is well known, and it is in abundance throughout Sweden and 
Norway to a high degree of latitude; where in the latter 
country, according to Linnauis, it is caught and preserved to 
serve as a principal portion of the subsistence of the poor 
people in winter. And although it is strictly a fish of fresh 
water, so that it can only live for a short time, and in a sickly 
condition in that which is altogether salt, it is also found in 
the upper portion of the Baltic, where the water is sufficiently 
diluted to allow it to thrive. Spain is not wholly without the 
Pike, as has been said by some; and it is an inhabitant of the 
temperate and colder regions of Asia, even so far as China, as 
also in America. It seems therefore a matter of surprise that 
this fish is scarcely mentioned, if at all, by the ancient writers 
of Greece and Home; in the former of which we meet with 
no reference to it; and in the latter, if it be the Esox mentioned 
by Pliny, his only notice of it is, that in the Rhone it has been 
known to weigh a thousand pounds; which assertion, derived 
perhaps from popular report, is sufficiently wide of the probable 
truth as to encourage the doubt of its being the fish now known 
by the same name. Yet as a native of the Tiber it must have 
been known to the people of Rome; but their writers seem 
generally to h.ave disregarded the natural living habits and 
instincts of the inhabitants of the waters, and to have viewed 
fishes as worthy of notice only so far as they ministered to 
the luxuries of the table, or again as they contributed some 
occult qualities to the impostures of medical magicians, who 
abounded in the city, and to the absurd pretensions of whom 
the higher classes of ancient Rome were accustomed to lend a 
willing ear. Ausonius, writing in the fourth century, mentions 
it as a fish of the Moselle; but this he does only to record a 
commonplace piece of wit, in reference to its vulgar name of 
Lucius ; which signified one that was born in the early morning 
light, or, as interpreted, under favourable circumstances, and 
it was therefore greatly valued by the Romans, for having been 
borne by many illustrious men of that empire; in contrast with 
