THE MUSKELLUNGE. 
PIKE, MUSKELLUNGE AND PICKEREL. 
I will give thee for thy food 
No fish that useth in the mud, 
But trout and pike, that love to swim 
Where the gravel from the brim, 
Through the pure streams may be seen. 
Beaumont and Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess, 1611. 
The goodly well-grown trout, I with my angle strike, 
And with my bearded wire, I take the ravenous pike 
Drayton, The Muses Elysium, Nymphal IV. 
of the most ancient among the families of fresh-water fishes, is 
^'that of the Pike—the Esocidos —a group of physostomous fishes, 
closely related to the flying-fishes, and the cyprinodonts, and not very dis¬ 
tantly related to the Salmon tribe. This family contains only the genus 
Esox, which embraces five species, all natives of North America, one, the 
Pike, being a resident of the Old World, as well. Geologists tell us that 
remains of the Pike are found in abundance in the quaternary deposits of 
Europe, and that this, or closely related species,occur in the diluvial marl 
of Silesia, and in the chalks of the CEningen region. The wide distribu¬ 
tion of the Pike throughout the northern regions of Europe, Asia and 
America, indicates that this species was in existence many centuries ago, 
before the three continents became so widely differentiated as they are at 
the present time. 
The Pike being the oldest, the most widely distributed, and the best 
known member of its tribe, shall serve as the text for this chapter, and 
the tvpe with which the related species shall be compared. So few, 
however, have been the observations in this country, and so much has 
Esox lucius been confused with the other species of the genus, that it 
