PIKE

a family name for a valuable group of fresh-water food and game fishes. It includes the small species preferably known as Preneren and also the big MvscaLLonce, both of which are treated under their own heads. The species to which the title is best apphed specifically is Exo lucits —the common pike, or “Great Lakes pike*’—a long, slender creature with long, broad. flattened snout and big mouth, greyish blue or grevish green in general color, with many whitish or vellowish spots. It is freely found in the waters of the upper Mi i ippi valley and of the Great Lakes, and elsewhere in the northern United States east of the Rockies, and Canada, and Alaska—as well as in parts of Europe and Asia. Its market weight seldom exceeds eight pounds, but big specimens have exceeded forty pounds and a length of four feet. The ‘‘wall-eved pike’’ is a pike-perch (see Perc), PILCHARD, a European fish of the clupeoid family, resembling the herring in general appearance. The young fish is the most highly prized and is famous the world over as the French sardine (see Sarpine). The true pilchard is not found in American waters, but a similar fish is plentiful along the Paeifie coast, and yet another in the West Indies. The young of the menhaden are in some sections colloquially termed ‘‘pilchards.’’: PILI-NUT (see the second color-page facing 346), a nut of the Philippines and other Pacific islands with a smooth, hard shell of varying light brown, generally triangular in form and tapering to both ends. The flesh in good specimens is of excellent quality. The uniformly reddish color of the nuts generally marketed is obtained by dyeing them—an undesirable and unnece ary practise.