SHARP-NOSED EEL. 



387 



mud, in a state of torpidity, the Eel indicates a low degree 

 of respiration. Dr. Marshall Hall has shown that the quan- 

 tity of respiration is inversely as the degree of irritability. 

 With a high degree of irritability and a low respiration, co- 

 exist 1st. The power of sustaining the privation of air and 

 of food ; 2nd. A low animal temperature ; 3rd. Little acti- 

 vity ; 4th. Great tenacity of life. All these peculiarities 

 Eels are well known to possess. The high degree of irri- 

 tability of the muscular fibre explains the restless motions of 

 Eels during thunder-storms, and helps to account for the 

 enormous captures made in some rivers by the use of gratings, 

 boxes, and eel-pots or baskets, which imprison all that enter. 

 The power of enduring the effects of a low temperature is 

 shown by the fact, that Eels exposed on the ground till 

 frozen, then buried in snow, and at the end of four days put 

 into water, and so thawed slowly, discovered gradually signs 

 of life, and soon perfectly recovered. 



The mode by which young Eels are produced appears to 

 have long been a subject of inquiry, and the notions of the 

 ancients as well as of some of the moderns were numerous 

 and fanciful. Aristotle believed that they sprang from the 

 mud ; Pliny, from fragments which were separated from their 

 bodies by rubbing against rocks ; others supposed that they 

 proceeded from the carcasses of animals ; Helmont believed 

 that they came from May-dew, and might be obtained by the 

 following process : " Cut up two turfs covered with May- 

 dew, and lay one upon the other, the grassy sides inwards, 

 and thus expose them to the heat of the sun ; in a few hours 

 there will spring from them an infinite quantity of Eels." 

 Horse-hair from the tail of a stallion, when deposited in water, 

 was formerly believed to be a never-failing source of a supply 

 of young Eels. It was long considered certain that they 

 were viviparous : this belief had its origin probably in the 

 numerous worms that are frequently to be found in various 



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