Cuvier writes: “We are necessarily astonished that the Ancients have left us no document, so to speak, on a fish so abundant in Europe as the Pike ... a fish which the Greeks must have known. The word _Esox_ occurs only once (Pliny, IX. 17) as an example of a large fish[448] comparable to the Tunny in form. In spite of Hardouin, I do not see that _Esox_ of the Rhine is the Pike, or believe with Ducange that it is the Salmon. The name _Luccio_ or _Luzzo_, by which we still call the Pike in this country, gives force to the supposition that the Latins of the time of Ausonius called it _Lucius_.”[449] The astonishment at the absence of all reference to the Pike would be greatly increased, if the authors, or really Valenciennes, had lived to read later writers. Parkyn (_op. cit._, p. 131) cites the fish among those represented by the craftsmen of both Palæolithic and Neolithic Art in the caves of France and Spain. G. de Mortillet (_op. cit._, p. 220) claims that the remains of Pike in the Palæolithic age occur not infrequently. F. Keller (_op. cit._, vol. I. 537, 544) notes their presence in Neolithic finds at Moosseedorf, etc. Meek, _Migration of Fish_, p. 18 (London, 1917), states that the Pike “occupied the European region in Oligocene and Miocene times, and that the remains of Pike are found in the Pleistocene of Breslau.” Attempts have been made to explain the absence of this fish previous to Ausonius by identifying _Esox lucius_ with (A) the _Oxyrhynchus_, and (B) the _Lupus_. These seem to me unsuccessful.[450] Petrus Bellonius among the early writers upholds the first identification. In his _Observations de Plusieurs Singularitëz_, Book II. ch. 32 (published 1553), “Le fleuve du Nil nourrit plusieurs autres poissons, lesquelz toutes fois ie ne veul specifier en ce lieu, sinon entăt que le Brochet y est frequent, et que nous avons difficulté de luy trouver une appellation antique, ie veul mŏstrer qu’il fut ancieňement appellé Oxyrynchus.” His effort breaks down for three reasons. First, Ælian says that the _Oxyrhynchus_,—a fish supposed to have sprung from the blood of the dead Osiris, or to be the _impiscation_ (if the word may be coined) of Osiris—although caught in the Nile (X. 46, 1, 12.), dwells mainly, or according to Plutarch, _de Iside et Osiride_, 7, altogether in the sea, whereas our _Esox_ cannot endure sea-water. Second, the sharp pointed form of beak (whence the name) cannot possibly represent the broad goose-like mouthpiece of our Pike. Third, the size of the _Oxyrhynchus_, often 8 cubits or 12 feet in length,[451] proscribes the Pike. Against the identification suggested by Franciscus Philadelphus of _Esox lucius_ with _Lupus_ two reasons lean heavily: (A) the etymological impossibility of λύκος (because of the wolflike nature of the Pike[452]) changing into Lucius, and (B) the _Lupus_ is _always_ in Greek called λάβραξ, never λύκος.[453]