[Three Hundred Animals Contents]
GROWS to a large magnitude, some of them weighing sometimes eighty pounds, and measuring fifteen or sixteen feet, upon a breadth of two. In colour it resembles the eel, and has no scales; one only small fin on the back, and a forked tail; its flesh is esteemed next to that of the eel, and has a similar flavour. This fish is a great depredator and makes considerable havock among the smaller inhabitants of the rivers and lakes which he inhabits. The Danube and several other rivers of Germany, and the lakes of Switzerland and Bavaria, contain numerous tribes of the Sheat Fish,
“ – whose fleet, impetuous, darting flight
Cleaves fast the crystal of the rippling streams,
Where, in the faithful mirror of the waves,
The snow crown’d Alps admire the splendid cones
Of their inverted tops – woe to the herds
Of smaller citizens that thrive and sport,
With pearly-girdled Nayads in the stream!
Woe to the golden carp, the minnow tribe,
All, but the tyrant pike, all soon must fall,
The fated victims of the hungry Sheat.”
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