PIKES. 
hours. Heat spoils his appetite ; cold sharpens 
A few examples of the indiscriminate voracity 
that characterizes this monster of the rivers, we 
select from the multitude that are on record. 
A writer in the New Sporting Magazine asserts 
that on a summer evening he has more than once 
seen a brood of young wild ducks devoured by a 
Pike in the course of a few minutes. An unfor- 
tunate guinea-pig, that had died in giving birth to 
a litter of young ones, was thrown with its brood 
into a piece of water in which were many very 
large Pike, when the whole were seized and swal- 
lowed by one of these tyrants ; an incident which 
gave the keeper occasion humorously to boast 
that he had seen a Pike which devoured at a meal 
a sow with a litter of pigs. At times this fish will 
ravenously seize almost anything that is offered it. 
In a small stream near London, a Pike lay bask- 
ing near a cottage, when a gentleman walking 
round his garden saw it ; he procured his rod and 
line, and for want of other bait desired the cook 
to cut him off a large slice of veal. With this he 
baited his hook, and dropping it gently on one 
side of the fish, the voracious creature instantly 
seized it, and was captured. It was found to 
weigh ISlbs. 
The voracity of the Pike is shown by a circum- 
stance of no infrequent occurrence in Sweden. 
Large Perch often swallow the baited hooks of 
stationary night-lines, and then enormous Pike 
gorge the hooked Perch in their turn. In this 
case, though the Pike himself is seldom or never 
actually hooked, yet on the fisherman’s drawing 
in his line, the Perch sets so fast in the greedy 
^ Hand-book of Angling, 336. 
