( 119 ) 
XIII. 
NOTES ON THE FISH OF THE UPPER LEA. 
By James Saunders, A.L.S. 
Read at Watford , 25 th March , 1902. 
The following lists of fishes which have been observed in the 
upper part of the River Lea, and in its expansion the lake in 
Luton Hoo Park, may he of interest for comparison with a list of 
those which have been observed in the lower part of the same river 
in the county of Hertford.^' The records from the Lea north of 
Luton are from original observation of species seen in that river 
prior to a drought which occurred in the Summer of the year 1868, f 
while those from Luton Hoo southwards to the confines of the 
county of Bedford are from information furnished by the fishkeeper 
on the Luton Hoo estate, and also from a personal inspection of the 
mounted specimens of fish in the small museum at the boat-house 
by the Luton Hoo lake. 
The largest of the pike there preserved measures about 45 inches 
in length, and when caught turned the scale at 38 pounds. The 
voracity of this species is proverbial, and may he illustrated by 
the following incidents. One morning during the early part of 
the Summer of 1900, the fishkeeper, when engaged in removing 
some dead fish near the waterfall, noticed that a large pike, which 
was partly decomposed, had partially swallowed a rat, its tail only 
projecting from the mouth of the fish. The keeper supposed that 
the throat of the pike was sufficiently capacious to swallow the 
rat, hut that the prey had mortally injured its enemy before it 
was suffocated. During the shooting-season of the same year 
a young pheasant was wounded and feU into the lake, when it 
at once disappeared and was never seen again, evidently having 
been captured by a pike. And in July, 1901, the keeper witnessed 
the disappearance of a half-grown bald coot as a brood of these 
birds attempted to swim across a rather narrow part of the lake. 
The coot had been arrested in its course by a pike. 
During the drought referred to above, the River Lea dried 
up north of the Luton Hoo lake, an event of which there is no 
previous local record. I remember how the fish crowded into the 
gradually-diminishing pools of the deepest parts of the river-bed, 
until eventually they all died from the entire absence of water. 
The only fish which I have observed to have re-established them¬ 
selves are the sticklebacks, and these have a hard struggle to maintain 
an existence owing to the diminished rainfall of recent years. 
* See paper on “Izaak Walton and the River Lea,” by R. B. Croft: 
‘ Trans. Herts Nat. Hist. Soc.,’ vol. ii, p. 9. 
f The mean rainfall at eight stations in Hertfordshire in June, 1868, was 
0-47 in., and in July, 0-36 in. It is very exceptional to have two consecutive 
Summer months with only about half an inch of rain in each.— Ed. 
