SHARP-NOSED EEL. 



fresh supplies, each bringing a cargo of 15,000 to 20,000 

 pounds'' weight of live Eels, for which the Dutch merchant 

 pays a duty of 13/. per cargo for his permission to sell. 

 Eels and Salmon are the only fish sold by the pound weight 

 in the London market. 



Eels are not only numerous, but they are also in great 

 request, in many other countries. Ellis, in his Polynesian 

 Researches, vol. ii. page 286, says, " In Otaheite, Eels are 

 great favourites, and are tamed and fed until they attain an 

 enormous size. These pets are kept in large holes, two or 

 three feet deep, partially filled with water. On the sides of 

 these pits they generally remained, excepting when called 

 by the person who fed them. I have been several times with 

 the young chief, when he has sat down by the side of the 

 hole, and, by giving a shrill sort of whistle, has brought out 

 an enormous Eel, which has moved about the surface of the 

 water, and eaten with confidence out of its master's hand." 



At a meeting of the Wernerian Natural History Society of 

 Edinburgh, held in January last, Professor Jameson, P. in 

 the chair. Mr. Walter C. Trevelyan read an account of the 

 habits of some tame Eels. In a small pond in a walled gar- 

 den at Craigo, the seat of David Carnegie, Esq. near Mon- 

 trosc, these Eels have been kept for nine or ten years. They 

 lie torpid during the whole winter, except the sun be shining- 

 bright, when they will occasionally come out from their 

 hiding-place under some loose stones, and sprawl about the 

 bottom of the pond, but refuse to take any food. The 26th 

 of April was the first day in 1840 that they rose for worms ; 

 but they eat sparingly until the warm weather begins, when 

 they become quite insatiable : one of them will then swallow 

 twenty-seven large worms one after the other. When they 

 were first put into the pond, and had no food given to them, 

 they devoured one another. They generally lie quietly at 

 the bottom of the pond, except when any of the family go 



