Digital heart book

It is almost dissolved by the summer
heats. A slighter and lighter colored shiner is found in one of
our ponds.
The Pickerel, _Esox reticulatus_, the swiftest, wariest, and most
ravenous of fishes, which Josselyn calls the Fresh-Water or River
Wolf, is very common in the shallow and weedy lagoons along the
sides of the stream. It is a solemn, stately, ruminant fish,
lurking under the shadow of a pad at noon, with still,
circumspect, voracious eye, motionless as a jewel set in water,
or moving slowly along to take up its position, darting from time
to time at such unlucky fish or frog or insect as comes within
its range, and swallowing it at a gulp. I have caught one which
had swallowed a brother pickerel half as large as itself, with
the tail still visible in its mouth, while the head was already
digested in its stomach. Sometimes a striped snake, bound to
greener meadows across the stream, ends its undulatory progress
in the same receptacle. They are so greedy and impetuous that
they are frequently caught by being entangled in the line the
moment it is cast.


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