Here is a large pond, and from this bank we can look down into the water. There are some yellow water-lilies with their broad expanded leaves. I have noticed that the blossoms are often attacked by the larvae of some two-winged flies. These flies lay their eggs within the petals, "lily-cradled" literally; the eggs hatch and the larvae eat the cradle. I do not know more of these flies: I have often meant to trace their history, but have somehow forgotten to do so. Do you see that pike basking on the top of the water; how still and motionless he lies. He is a good-sized fish, at least I should say he was four pounds weight. "I wish we could catch him," said Willy. We have no tackle with us; besides, when pike are sunning themselves in that way on the top of the water, they are seldom inclined to take a bait. "What is the largest pike," asked Jack, "you ever saw caught?" The largest I ever saw alive was caught in the canal about five years ago; it weighed twenty-one pounds, and was really a splendid fish. What voracious fish they are; they will often take young ducks, water-hens and coots, and will sometimes try to swallow a fish much too large for their throats. It is said that a pike once seized the head of a swan as she was feeding under water, and gorged so much of it as killed them both. The servants perceiving the swan with its head under water for a longer time than usual, took the boat and found both swan and pike dead. "Gesner relates that a pike in the Rhone seized on the lips of a mule that was brought to water, and that the beast drew the fish out before it could disengage itself. Walton was assured by his friend Mr. Segrave, who kept tame otters, that he had 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. A woman in Poland had her foot seized by a pike as she was washing clothes in a pond." Mr. Jesse tells the story of a gentleman, who, as he was one day walking by the side of the river Wey, saw a large pike in a shallow creek. He immediately pulled off his coat, tucked up his shirt sleeves, and went into the water to intercept the return of the fish to the river, and to endeavour to throw it out upon the bank by getting his hands under it. During this attempt the pike, finding he could not make his escape, seized one of the arms of the gentleman, and lacerated it so much that the marks of the wound were visible for a long time afterwards. Pike will live to a great age, ninety years or more. In the year 1497, according to old Gesner, a pike was taken at Halibrun in Suabia with a brazen ring attached to it, on which was the following inscription in Greek:--"I am the fish which was put into the lake by the hands of the governor of the universe, Frederick the Second, the 5th of October, 1230." This pike, therefore, would be two hundred and sixty-seven years old; people said it weighed three