EELS AND THE EEL QUESTION. 427 



of a particular sort and falling in certain places ; from the transforma- 

 tion of horse-hairs, and from electrical disturbances. A reverend bishop 

 once communicated to the Eoyal Society a contribution on the subject 

 of the origin of eels which in substance averred that he had seen young 

 eels on the thatching of a cottage and that the eggs were adhering to 

 the reeds of the thatching before they were cut, and were finally hatched 

 on the roof by the heat of the sun. Helmont, an ancient writer, is spe- 

 cific and gives a recipe for producing eels. Two pieces of turf with May 

 dew upon them were to be taken and the grassy sides apposed and placed 

 in the sun. After a few hours an 'infinite quantity of eels' were gener- 

 ated. Helmont doubtless felt so sure of this that he regarded trying it 

 a superfluous inconvenience, having no use for young eels. In the 

 ' Piscatory Eclogues ' is a reference in the same strain : 



Say, canst thou tell how worms of moisture breed, 

 Or pike are gendered of the pickrel weed? 

 How carp without the parent seed renew 

 Or slimy eels are formed of genial dew? 



Aristotle wrote : ' The eel is neither male nor female and is procreated 

 from nothing.' He explained that they were produced from the slime 

 of their bodies, which they scraped off against the pebbles or stones or 

 by contact with each other in their sinuous migrations. This sounds 

 fishy to the twentieth century, but it is easy to see that to Aristotle 

 there should be something in it. There was the slime — that was evi- 

 dent enough. It was purposive in amount, it gave the slipperiness to 

 a creature which is notoriously slippery. The remarkable abundance of 

 eels required a theory of reproduction on a grand scale. And as for their 

 rubbing together, a mass of wriggling and intertwining eels, the well- 

 known 'eel-ball,' suggested nothing more strongly. What more simple 

 and, for those times, natural ! 



Now there is a curious mixture of stumbling truth and preposterous 

 error in the development of the eel question from this time forward. 

 There was another teaching concerning the source of eels. Some who 

 examined them discovered many small worm-like creatures in their in- 

 ternal machinery and insisted that these were the young and were pro- 

 duced alive from the parent eel — that is, that the eel was viviparous. 

 This was certainly a much more natural and credible explanation, but 

 it was scorned by Aristotle and Aristotle was correct. He said they 

 were not eels, but were worms, and modern observations sufficiently 

 uphold him. Yet the contrary opinion was held by the scientists of 

 the middle ages, and names which are written high and imperishably 

 on the scroll of fame subscribed to it. Leeuwenhoek, the discoverer of 

 bacteria, and the renowned Linnaeus believed that eels were not 

 spawned and hatched but were born. 



