angling, or any that desires to improve that art, to try this conclusion.

I shall also impart two other experiments (but not tried by myself,) which I will deliver in the same words that they were given me, by an excellent angler and a very friend, in writing: he told me the latter was too good to be told but in a learned language, lest it should be made common.

"Take the stinking oil drawn out of the polypody of the oak by a retort, mixed with turpentine and hive honey, and anoint your bait therewith, and it will doubtless draw the fish to it."

The other is this: "Vulnera hederæ grandissimæ inflicta sudunt balsamum oleo gelato, albicantique persimile, odoris vero longe suavissimi.”

"It is supremely sweet to any fish, and yet asafœtida may do the like."**

But in these I have no great faith; yet grant it probable; and have had from some chemical men (namely, from Sir George Hastings and others) an affirmation of them to be very advantageous. But no more of these: especially not in this place.†

I might here, before I take my leave of the Salmon, tell you, that there is more than one sort of them, as namely, a Tecon, and another called in some places a Samlet, or by some a Skegger, (but these, and others which I forbear to name, may be fish of another kind, and differ as we know a Herring and a Pilchard do;) which, I think, are as different as the rivers in which they

* There is extant, though I have never been able to get a sight of it, a book, entitled, the Secrets of Angling, by J. D[avors]; at the end of which is the following mystical recipe of R. R." who possibly may be the "R. Roe" mentioned in the Preface to Walton:

To bless thy bait, and make the fish to bite,
Lo! here's a means, if thou canst hit it right:
Take gum of life, well beat and laid to soak
In oil well drawn from that which kills the oak.
Fish where thou wilt, thou shalt have sport thy fill;
When others fail, thou shalt be sure to kill.

The following melancholy catastrophe should operate as a general caution against using, in the composition of baits, any ingredient prejudicial to the human constitution: "Newcastle, June 16, 1788. Last week, in Lancashire, two young men having caught a large quantity of Trout by mixing the water in a small brook with lime, ate heartily of the Trout at dinner the next day; they were seized, at midnight, with violent pains in the intestines; and though medical assistance was immediately procured, they expired before noon in the greatest agonies."

There is a fish in many rivers, of the Salmon kind, which, though very small, is thought by some curious persons to be of the same species; and this, I take it, is the fish known by the different names of Salmon-pink, Shedders, Skeggers, Last-springs, and Gravel Last-springs. But there is another small fish very much resembling these in shape and colour, called the Gravel Last-spring, found only in the rivers Wye and Severn, which is, undoubtedly, a distinct species. These spawn about the beginning of September and in the Wye I have taken them with an Ant-fly as fast as I could throw. Perhaps this is what Walton calls the Tecon.

* Ivy.

breed, and must, by me, be left to the disquisitions of men of more leisure and of greater abilities than I profess myself to have.*

And lastly, I am to borrow so much of your promised patience as to tell you, that the Trout, or Salmon, being in season, have, at their first taking out of the water, (which continues during life,) their bodies adorned, the one with such red spots, and the other with such black or blackish spots, as give them such an addition of natural beauty, as I think was never given to any woman by the artificial paint or patches in which they so much pride themselves in this age. And so I shall leave them both; and proceed to some observations on the Pike.

CHAPTER VIII.

OBSERVATIONS OF THE LUCE, OR PIKE, WITH DIRECTIONS HOW TO FISH FOR HIM.

THE PIKE-Esox Lucius.-LINNEUS.

Piscator. THE mighty Luce, or Pike, is taken to be the tyrant, as the Salmon is the king, of the fresh waters. It is not to be doubted, but that they are bred, some by generation, and some not; as namely, of a weed, called pickerel weed, unless learned Gesner be much mistaken; for he says, this weed and other glutinous matter, with the help of the sun's heat, in some particular months, and some ponds apted for it by Nature, do become Pikes.t But, doubtless, divers Pikes are bred after this manner, or are brought into some ponds some such other ways as are past man's finding out, of which we have daily testimonies.

* It does not appear to me that Walton had much, if any, personal experience in Salmon angling, particularly with the fly, which is undoubtedly by far the best sport of this kind.-J. R

It is surely not needful here to tell the reader that this is unfounded fancy; yet have similar doctrines of spontaneous generation been maintained in our times by such men as Lamarck, Baron Cuvier, and Blumenbach. I once asked a disciple of the school, if he thought an Elephant could be so produced? "No," he said. "A mite, then ?" he hesitated, but thought it might.-J. R.

Sir Francis Bacon, in his History of Life and Death, observes the Pike to be the longest lived of any fresh water fish; and yet he computes it to be not usually above forty years: and others think it to be not above ten years: and yet Gesner mentions a Pike taken in Swedeland, in the year 1446, with a ring about his neck, declaring he was put into that pond by Frederick the Second, more than two hundred years before he was last taken, as by the inscription in that ring, being Greek, was interpreted by the then Bishop of Worms.* But of this

no more; but that it is observed, that the old or very great Pikes have in them more of state than goodness; the smaller or middle-sized Pikes being, by the most and choicest palates, observed to be the best meat: and, contrary, the Eel is observed to be the better for age and bigness.

All Pikes that live long prove chargeable to their keepers, because their life is maintained by the death of so many other fish, even those of their own kind: which has made him by some writers to be called the tyrant of the rivers, or the fresh water wolf, by reason of his bold, greedy, devouring disposition; which is so keen, that, as Gesner relates, a man going to a pond, where it seems a Pike had devoured all the fish, to water his mule, had a Pike bit his mule by the lips; to which the Pike hung so fast that the mule drew him out of the water; and by that accident, the owner of the mule angled out the Pike. And the same Gesner observes, that a maid in Poland had a Pike bit her by the foot, as she was washing clothes in a pond. And I have heard the like of a woman in Killingworth pond, not far from Coventry. But I have been assured by my friend Mr Seagrave, of whom I spake to you formerly, that keeps tame otters, that he hath known a Pike, in extreme hunger, fight with one of his otters for a Carp that the otter had caught, and was then bringing out of the water. told you who relate these things; and tell you they are persons of credit; and shall conclude this observation by telling you, what a wise man has observed, “It is a hard thing to persuade the belly, because it has no ears."†

I have

* The story is told by Hakewill, who, in his Apologie of the Power and Providence of God, fol. Oxf. 1635, part i. p. 145, says, "I will close up this chapter with a relation of Gesner's, in his epistle to the Emperor Ferdinand, prefixed before his booke De Piscibus, touching the long life of a Pike which was cast into a pond, or poole, near Hailebrune in Swevia, with this inscription engraven upon a collar of brass fastened about his necke. Ego sum ille piscis huic stagno omnium primus impositus per mundi rectoris Frederici Secundi manus, 5 Octobris, anno 1230.' I am that fish which was first of all cast into this poole by the hand of Fredericke the Second, governour of the world, the fift of October, in the year 1230. He was again taken up in the year 1497, and by the inscription it appeared he had then lived there two hundred and sixty-seven yeares."

Bowlker, in his Art of Angling, before cited, page 9, gives the following instance of the exceeding voracity of this fish: "My father catched a Pike

But if these relations be disbelieved, it is too evident to be doubted, that a Pike will devour a fish of his own kind that shall be bigger than his belly or throat will receive, and swallow a part of him, and let the other part remain in his mouth till the swallowed part be digested, and then swallow that other part, that was in his mouth, and so put it over by degrees: which is not unlike the ox, and some other beasts, taking their meat, not out of their mouth immediately into their belly, but first into some place betwixt, and then chew it, or digest it by degrees after, which is called chewing the cud. And, doubtless, Pikes will bite when they are not hungry; but, as some think, even for very anger, when a tempting bait comes near to them. And it is observed that the Pike will eat venomous things, as some kind of frogs are,* and yet live without being harmed

in Barn-Meer (a large standing water in Cheshire) was an ell long, and weighed thirty-five pounds, which he brought to the Lord Cholmondeley: his lordship ordered it to be turned into a canal in the garden, wherein were abundance of several sorts of fish. About twelve months after, his lordship drawed the canal, and found that this overgrown Pike had devoured all the fish, except one large Carp that weighed between nine and ten pounds, and that was bitten in several places. The Pike was then put into the canal again, together with abundance of fish with him to feed upon, all which he devoured in less than a year's time; and was observed by the gardener and workmen there, to take the ducks, and other waterfowl, under water. Whereupon they shot magpies and crows, and threw them into the canal, which the Pike took before their eyes of this they acquainted their lord, who, thereupon, ordered the slaughterman to fling in calves' bellies, chickens' guts, and such like garbage to him, to prey upon; but being soon after neglected, he died, as supposed, for want of food."

In Dr Plot's History of Staffordshire, 246, are sundry relations of Pike of great magnitude; one in particular caught in the Thames, an ell and two inches long.

The following story, containing farther evidence of the voracity of this fish, with the addition of a pleasant circumstance, I met with in Fuller's Worthies, Lincolnshire, page 144.

"A cub Fox, drinking out of the river Arnus in Italy, had his head seized on by a mighty Pike, so that neither could free themselves, but were ingrappled together. In this contest, a young man runs into the water, takes them out both alive, and carrieth them to the Duke of Florence, whose palace was hard by. The porter would not admit him, without a promise of sharing his full half in what the duke should give him; to which he, hopeless otherwise of entrance, condescended. The duke, highly affected with the rarity, was about giving him a good reward, which the other refused, desiring his highness would appoint one of his guard to give him a hundred lashes, that so his porter might have fifty, according to his composition. And here my intelligence leaveth me how much farther the jest was followed "

The same author relates, from a book entitled, Vox Piscis, printed in 1626, that one Mr Anderson, a townsman and merchant of Newcastle, talking with a friend on Newcastle bridge, and fingering his ring, let it fall into the river; but it having been swallowed by a fish, and the fish afterward taken, the ring was found and restored to him.- Worthies, Northumberland, 310. A like story is, by Herodotus, related of Polycrates king of Samos.

That either frogs or toads are poisonous is not quite correct, for though the secretion from the pustules of the toad is somewhat acrid, it cannot justly be called venomous.-J. R.

by them; for, as some say, he has in him a natural balsam, or antidote against all poison. And he has a strange heat that, though it appears to us to be cold, can yet digest or put over any fish-flesh, by degrees, without being sick. And others observe that he never eats the venomous frog till he have first killed her, and then, as ducks are observed to do to frogs in spawning time, at which time some frogs are observed to be venomous, so thoroughly washed her, by tumbling her up and down in the water, that he may devour her without danger.* And Gesner affirms, that a Polonian gentleman did faithfully assure him he had seen two young geese at one time in the belly of a Pike. And doubtless a Pike in his height of hunger will bite at and devour a dog that swims in a pond; and there have been examples of it, or the like; for, as I told you, "the belly has no ears when hunger comes upon it."

The Pike is also observed to be a solitary, melancholy, and a bold fish melancholy, because he always swims or rests himself alone, and never swims in shoals or with company, as Roach and Dace, and most other fish do: and bold, because he fears not a shadow, or to see or be seen of any body, as the Trout, and Chub, and all other fish do.

And it is observed by Gesner, that the jaw-bones and hearts, and galls of Pikes are very medicinable for several diseases, or to stop blood, to abate fevers, to cure agues, to oppose or expel the infection of the plague, and to be many ways medicinable and useful for the good of mankind :† but he observes, that the biting of a Pike is venomous, and hard to be cured.

And it is observed, that the Pike is a fish that breeds but once a year; and that other fish, as, namely, Loaches, do breed oftener: as we are certain tame Pigeons do almost every month; and yet the Hawk, a bird of prey, as the Pike is of fish, breeds but once in twelve months. And you are to note, that his time of breeding, or spawning, is usually about the end of February, or somewhat later, in March, as the weather proves colder or warmer and to note, that his manner of breeding is thus: a he and a she Pike will usually go together out of a river into some ditch or creek; and that there the spawner casts her eggs, and the melter hovers over her all that time that she is casting her spawn, but touches her not.

I might say more of this, but it might be thought curiosity or worse, and shall therefore forbear it; and take up so much of your attention as to tell you, that the best of Pikes are noted to be in rivers; next, those in great ponds or meres; and the worst in small ponds.

* This is obviously quite fanciful. —J. R.

† All this nonsense has been long exploded. — J. R.