43o POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



hands of an investigator, the eggs of Mondini's eel being immature. 

 This important event was the final blow that settled the sex question 

 as far as eels are concerned. Over twenty years afterward, however, 

 the German Fishery Association in Berlin was led by renewed interest 

 in eels, due to the stimulus of Syrski's work on the male eel," to offer 

 a reward of fifty marks for an eel in full roe. The eel was to be sub- 

 mitted to Professor Virchow, and the royal superintendent of fisheries 

 undertook to forward the responses. It seems that about every German 

 newspaper ' from the Ehine to the Vistula and from the Alps to the 

 sea,' gave publicity, with a result creditable to them, but overwhelming 

 to the royal superintendent. His delight at the popular interest in 

 eels was succeeded by astonishment and that by horror. His postal 

 expenses compelled him to announce that all eels and communications 

 should be forwarded direct to Virchow. The public complied and the 

 great German savant was obliged to cry enough and beg for mercy. 

 People wrote and sent their specimens, parts of eels, contents of eels, 

 thread worms from eels and above all, stories of eels and of eggs in 

 eels, but seldom an eel intact and none in the desired condition. They 

 usually ate the eel and sent various and often irrelevant portions of 

 its anatomy, with a request that the fifty marks be remitted by return 

 mail. If this prize contest had no scientific results, it contributed to 

 the merriment of the German nation. The comic papers cartooned 

 the incidents and announced that in the future the scientists desired 

 only smoked eels. 



To Mondini is due the credit which has largely gone to Eathke of 

 first demonstrating sex in eels. History repeated itself as often before 

 and since in according the honors of priority elsewhere than they be- 

 longed. However, all these observers shared in determining an im- 

 portant and historic phase of the eel question, which, while there are 

 still interesting queries connected with the natural history of eels, has 

 now merged itself with the general and special problems of biology and 

 is no longer paramount as in the olden days. 



Eels themselves, as such, are no mystery, but a familiar and com- 

 monplace factor in our economy. From the epicurean standpoint 

 extremes meet in them — they excite a gastronomic horror in minds 

 appropriately constituted and a peculiar delectation in the gourmand 

 in whom suggestion is not strong enough to appeal against the keen 

 delight of a sensitive and discriminating palate. The eel has ever 

 occupied an extreme position. He is apt to be loathed or loved. It 

 is characteristic of him that he never did anything by halves. What he 

 does he does with all his might. In breeding his offspring were legion 

 and filled the seas. In his contact with the human race, he ingratiated 

 himself into the affections of a whole nation, or was rejected utterly. 



