Page:Natural History, Fishes.djvu/237

Rh. Heat spoils his appetite; cold sharpens it."

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 unfortunate 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 swallowed 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 basking 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 12lbs.

The voracity of the Pike is shown by a circumstance 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