The Common Eel 



water only at spawning time. Such fishes are called catadromous 

 species, and their movements at spawning time are in marked 

 contrast with, and the exact opposite of, those of the anadromous 

 fishes (such as the salmon and the shad) whose true home is 

 in salt water, but which run up freshwater streams to spawn. 



The method of reproduction of the common eel was long 

 a mystery, and even to this day it continues to be such 

 among the illiterate and uninformed. While its method of re- 

 production has long been fully understood, scarcely a year 

 passes th-at does not bring to the U. S. Fish Commission a 

 communication from someone who claims that he has discovered 

 that the lamprey an animal belonging to an entirely different 

 class from the eel, and only most remotely related to it is 

 really the female eel! 



Jacoby has remarked that the eel was from the earliest 

 times a riddle to the Greeks; while ages ago they knew the 

 manner of reproduction among other fishes, they were not able 

 to make any such discovery regarding the common eel. The 

 Greek poets, following the usage of their day, which was 

 to attribute to Jupiter all children whose paternity was doubtful, 

 were accustomed to say that Jupiter was also the progenitor of 

 the eel. 



Aristotle states in his "History of Animals" that eels have 

 no sexes, nor eggs, nor semen, and that they rise from ges 

 entera, the entrails of the sea. Some have thought that by this 

 expression Aristotle meant earthworms, while others have 

 claimed that the Greeks used this term for all sorts of creeping, 

 limbless things living in soil or mud, and that these were spon- 

 taneously generated. 



"When we bear in mind," says Jacoby, "the veneration 

 in which Aristotle was held in ancient times, and still more 

 throughout the middle ages a period of nearly 2,000 years it 

 could not be otherwise than that this wonderful statement 

 should be believed, and that it should become embellished by 

 numerous additional legends and amplifications, many of which 

 have held their own in the popular mind even to this day." 



There is no other animal concerning whose origin and ex- 

 istence there is such a number of false beliefs and ridiculous 

 fables. 



Though Aristotle's absurd views continued to receive cre- 



77 



