256 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pended the large sum of a hundred shillings in a dish of eels." Any- 

 one who could now sit down to cope with a dish of eels of the value 

 of five pounds would indeed have gastronomic capabilities likely to 

 make an alderman die of envy. But, in the eating of eels, excellent 

 as they are, it is well to remember the advice given in the ancient 

 medical book entitled " Regimen Sanitatis Salernise " : 



" Who knows not physic should be nice and choice 

 In eating eels, because they hurt the voice. 

 Both eels and cheese, without good store of wine 

 Well drunk with them, offend at any time." 



For a long time the most extraordinary theories were accepted 

 regarding the birth of young eels. Aristotle believed they sprang 

 from the mud (wherein he was not far wrong, as eels deposit their 

 spawn in mud and sand) ; Pliny maintained that young eels devel- 

 oped from fragments separated from the parents' bodies by rubbing 

 against rocks ; others supposed that they proceeded from the carcasses 

 of animals ; Helmont declared that they came from May-dew, and 

 gave the following receipt for obtaining them : " Cut up two turfs 

 covered with May-dew, and lay one upon the other, the grassy side 

 inward, and then expose them to the heat of the sun ; in a few hours 

 there will spring from them an infinite quantity of eels." Of that 

 ancient superstition of one's childhood that horse-hairs cut up and 

 deposited in water would turn into eels it is hardly necessary to speak, 

 for who can not remember those unpleasant little bottles, erst used for 

 medicine, which garnished one's nursery, in which the propagation of 

 eels from horse-hair was carried on with the profound faith of child- 

 hood? Eels generally shed their spawn in April, and, when not 

 hindered, they almost invariably choose an estuary, where they scatter 

 the spawn loosely in the sand or soil. But that an annual visit to the 

 sea is by no means necessary to their existence is proved by the fact 

 that many eels who inhabit inland ponds and lakes never visit the 

 sea at all. A gentleman digging in the month of October in the 

 gravel-banks of the river Stour found the place " alive with young 

 eels, some of them scarcely hatched, at the depth of from five to 

 fifteen inches " ; and at one of the meetings of the British Associa- 

 tion for the Advancement of Science a member stated that he had 

 seen a considerable number of young eels rise up through a small 

 opening in the sand at the bottom of a small stream, the Ravens- 

 bourne. The greater number of eels, however, do visit the sea, and 

 the " passing up " a river of the young eels is one of the most curi- 

 ous sights of natural history. This passage of young eels is called 

 eel/are on the banks of the Thames ; and it has been thought by 

 some that the term elver, which on the banks of the Severn is used 

 indiscriminately for all young eels, is a corruption of the word eel- 

 fare. In the Thames this eel/are takes place in the spring, in other 



