PIKE , MUSKELLUNGE AND PICKEREL. 
281 
of the vernal leaves, the broods being known as “Ice-Pike,” “Frog- 
Pike,” and “Blossom-Pike.” 
Benecke’s estimate of the number of eggs is undoubtedly too low. 
Buckland states that in a Pike of twenty-eight pounds, the roes weighed 
twenty-one ounces, and contained 292,320 eggs, while in one of thirty-two 
pounds, there were 595,000 eggs, weighing five pounds. 
Benecke’s period of incubation would be too short for more northern 
climates. In Great Britain and Sweden, they require from twenty-five to 
thirty days to come to maturity. 
Seeley states that the young fish breed at the age of three years, and 
that the females are larger than the males. 
The newly hatched Pikes grow rapidly when provided abundantly with 
food. A yearling fish in Prussia is often a foot in length, and according 
to Seeley a two-year-old may with exceptional feeding, weigh six or seven 
pounds. 
Wittmack gives a number of statements from authorities in different 
parts of Germany, showing the annual rate of growth of the Pike, which 
appears to vary from two to three pounds, the maximum size attained 
being from forty-five to seventy pounds. He cites one instance in which, 
in two summers, a few individuals, liberated in a pond full of a species of 
carp, grew from the weight of one and three-quarters to that of about ten 
pounds. 
As to the size to which a Pike may ultimately attain, there exist import¬ 
ant differences of opinion. Frank Buckland naively remarks that “ from 
the days of Gesner down, more lies, to put it in very plain language—have 
been told about the Pike than any other fish in the world ; and the greater 
the improbability of the story, the more particularly is it sure to be 
quoted.” This savage thrust at Gesner and his commenters, has especial 
reference to the story of that enormous fish, nineteen feet in length, 
caught in the year 1497, in a pool near Hailprun in Suabia, and which 
carried attached to its gills, a brass ring upon which was a Greek inscrip¬ 
tion, which said:—“ I am that fish that was first put into this lake by the 
hands of the Emperor Frederick II, on the fifth day of October, 1230.” 
The skeleton of this fish was said to have been preserved at Mannheim for 
many years, and there is a tradition that some inquiring anatomist dis¬ 
covered that it had been lengthened by the addition of several vertebrae. 
While it is true that “ the legends of fishes with rings bearing ancient 
