All the pikes are greedy and voracious fishes, very destructive to other species which may happen to be their neighbors; "mere machines for the assimilation of other organisms." Thoreau describes the pike as "the swiftest, wariest, and most ravenous of fishes, which Josselyn calls the river-wolf. It is a solemn, stately, ruminant fish, lurking under the shadow of a lily-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 one gulp. Sometimes a striped snake, bound for greener meadows across the stream, ends its undulatory progress in the same receptacle." [Illustration: FIG. 150.—The Pike, _Esox-lucius_ L. (From life by R. W. Shufeldt.) ] As food-fishes, all the _Esocidæ_ rank high. Their flesh is white, fine-grained, disposed in flakes, and of excellent flavor. The finest of the _Esocidæ_, a species to be compared, as a grand game fish, with the salmon, is the muskallunge (_Esox masquinongy_). Technically this species may be known by the fact that its cheeks and opercles are both naked on the lower half. It may be known also by its great size and by its color, young and old being spotted with black on a golden-olive ground. [Illustration: FIG. 151.—Muskallunge, _Esox masquinongy_ Mitchill. Ecorse, Mich. ] The muskallunge is found only in the Great Lake region, where it inhabits the deeper waters, except for a short time in the spring, when it enters the streams to spawn. It often reaches a length of six feet and a weight of sixty to eighty pounds. It is necessarily somewhat rare, for no small locality would furnish food for more than one such giant. It is, says Hallock, "a long, slim, strong, and swift fish, in every way formed for the life it leads, that of a dauntless marauder." A second species of muskallunge, _Esox ohiensis_, unspotted but vaguely cross-barred, occurs sparingly in the Ohio River and the upper Mississippi Valley. It is especially abundant in Chautauqua Lake.