During clear and calm weather in summer and autumn, pike take most freely about three in the afternoon in winter they may be angled for with equal chances of success during the whole day : early in the morning and late in the evening are the periods best adapted for the spring.

This fish is also angled for in a variety of ways by fixed or set lines, and also by trimmers, or liggers, as they are provincially called in some parts of England. Horsea Mere and Heigham Sound are two large pieces of water in the county of Norfolk, not far from Yarmouth, noted for their pike, as partly immortalised in old Camden's famous lines of lengthened sweetness long drawn out,

"Horsey Pike,
None like."

Mr. Yarrell received the following returns from a sporting gentleman, of four days' fishing with trimmers in these waters, in the month of March, 1834 viz. on the 11th at Heigham Sounds, 60 pike, weighing 280 pounds; on the 13th at Horsea Mere, 89 pike, weighing 379 pounds; on the 18th, again at Horsea Mere, 49 pike, weighing 213 pounds; on the 19th, at Heigham Sounds, 58 pike, weighing 263 pounds: the four days sport producing 256 fish, weighing together 1135 pounds.

As the mode of using trimmers in these extensive broads affords great diversion, and is rather peculiar, we shall here quote Mr. Yarrell's account of it. "I may state that the ligger or trimmer is a long cylindrical float, made of wood or cork, or

rushes tied together at each end; to the middle of this float a string is fixed, in length from eight to fifteen feet; this string is wound round the float except two or three feet, when the trimmer is to be put into the water, and slightly fixed by a notch in the wood or cork, or by putting it between the ends of the rushes. The bait is fixed on the hook, and the hook fastened to the end of the pendent string, and the whole then dropped into the water. By this arrangement the bait floats at any required depth, which should have some reference to the temperature of the season,-pike swimming near the surface in fine warm weather, and deeper when it is colder, but generally keeping near its peculiar haunts. When the bait is seized by a pike, the jerk looses the fastening, and the whole string unwinds, the wood, cork, or rushes, floating at the top, indicating what has occurred. Floats of wood or cork are generally painted, to render them more distinctly visible on the water to the fishers, who pursue their amusement and the liggers in boats. Floats of rushes are preferred to others, as least calculated to excite suspicion in the fish.”*

This is the only species of pike which occurs in our fresh waters, or in those of other parts of Europe. It is one of the largest of lake or river fishes, and indeed, if the accounts which some writers have given of it be not greatly exaggerated, it occasionally attains a size not greatly inferior to the gigantic inhabitants of the ocean. Individuals

are recorded as measuring from five to eight feet in length, and its age is said to be as remarkable as its dimensions. The most famous of all pikes is that mentioned by Gesner, who states that it was taken in Suabia in the year 1497 with a brass ring attached to it, on which was engraven in Greek the following sentence (which we doubt was never carried into execution) ::-"I am the fish which was first of all put into this lake by the hands of the Governor of the Universe, Frederick the Second, the 5th of October, 1230." If it was 267 years of age, we see no particular reason why it should not (as is alleged) have weighed 350 pounds, and measured nineteen feet long.

Pike, however, are occasionally taken in the English lakes above thirty pounds in weight, and Dr. Grierson mentions one killed in Loch Ken, in Galloway, which weighed 61 pounds. The colour of this fish in early life is of a greenish hue, but it afterwards becomes rather of a dusky olive brown upon the upper parts, marked on the sides with a lighter. mottling of green and yellow, and passing into silvery white on the abdomen. We do not think highly of its flesh, although by many it is

held in some esteem.