Pike
Pike names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Pike or Pickerel, a family of voracious fishes
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
or Pickerel, a family of voracious fishes. The body of a pike is long and almost cylindrical, with a long, flat snout fitted with teeth worthy of a shark. Jordan says there are five species: the American pickerel, dark green, in coastwise streams, length twelve inches, Massachusetts to Florida; the little pickerel, length twelve inches, olive green, sides marked with dark curved stripes like worm tracks, found in the small streams and bayous of the Mississippi; the eastern pickerel, green, with a network of side markings, length thirty inches, Maine to Alaska, not west of the Alleghanies,--the kind that Whittier failed to land; the pike, northern pike, or northern pickerel, grayish with whitish round spots, length thirty to fifty inches, found in Europe, Asia, and North America from Lake Champlain to Alaska; and largest of all, the muskallunge, dark gray with round blackish spots, length up to eight feet. It is a magnificent fish and is found in the Great Lake region and northwestward. The wall-eyed pike, so-called, is more nearly a bass. Pickerel or pike are not favorite kinds of fish. Although the flesh of cold water pickerel is firm and white there is more or less prejudice against it. The indictment contains a long list of charges. It is the most voracious fish in our waters. It exterminates other fish and eats anything with the least appearance of life. In Europe it is considered a meaner trick to put pike in a gentleman's fish pond than to turn a horse loose in the kitchen garden. Thoreau had an eye to the picturesque qualities: The pike 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 a gulp. Sometimes a striped snake, bound for greener meadows across the stream, ends its undulatory progress in the same receptacle.
Pike a military weapon
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a military weapon, consisting of a narrow, elongated lance-head fixed to a pole or a simple spike of metal. The end of the staff had also a spike for insertion in the ground, thus allowing a musketeer to keep off the approach of cavalry while attending to his other arms. It is now superseded by the bayonet. Also, any individual of the genus Esox, especially Esox lucius, the common pike. It is one of the larger fresh-water fishes, sometimes attaining a length of five or six feet, and much esteemed for food. Pikes are extremely voracious, and small fish and frogs form their staple food. They commence to spawn at three years old; the ova are deposited in March, and the spawning season lasts about three months. The pike are migrants, and have been known to travel overland. The head and back are olive-brown, sides paler, belly silvery white; body mottled with roundish spots, which sometimes form cross bars on tail. The English name has reference to the elongated form of the fish, or the shape of its snout.
Pike ZEBULON MONTGOMERY, an American military officer
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
ZEBULON MONTGOMERY, an American military officer; born in Lamberton, N. J., Jan. 5, 1779; was appointed an ensign in his father's regiment in 1799; conducted an expedition sent by the government to trace the Mississippi to its source in 1805; also made explorations in Louisiana Territory, discovering Pike's Peak and reaching the Rio Grande in the course of his travels. In 1813 he was promoted Brigadier- General, and on April 13 of that year while in command of the attack on York (now Toronto), in Upper Canada, was killed.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 list of five "pike" holds up in outline, but the detail has been trimmed: no verified muskellunge approaches the eight feet claimed there, the largest authenticated fish being close to five feet, and the "wall-eyed pike" that Aiton called "more nearly a bass" is now firmly placed in the perch family as Sander vitreus, though anglers keep the old name. Collier's was right in 1921 that the pike as a weapon had been "superseded by the bayonet," yet Britain's Home Guard was issued improvised pikes in 1942, the last serious appearance of the thing in a European army. The biography of Zebulon Montgomery Pike carries a slip worth fixing: he was mortally wounded at the capture of York on 27 April 1813, not 13 April, killed by the explosion of the British powder magazine. Modern accounts also stop short of saying he "discovered" Pike's Peak, since he never reached the summit and turned back in the snow.
Written for this edition, 2026.