Lampreys, 235 



shrewdness, has told me that he has seen them creeping up 

 the wet posts of the sluices of the saw mills, at the cele- 

 brated falls of Kilmorack, on the latter river, to the height of 

 ten feet. I can corroborate this curious fact so far, as fol- 

 lows : — About the latter end of May, 1 834, I had occasion 

 to be on the river Ewe, which has been rendered celebrated 

 by Sir Humphry Davy in his Salmonia. The river has 

 only a run of about two miles from Loch Maree, is full of 

 large stones, and very rapid, and the banks are bounded 

 likewise by large stones, and rocks of small height jutting 

 here and there into the stream ; but there are no perpendi- 

 cular falls, except one of a few feet, where the river plunges 

 into a narrow pool at low tides like the lock of a canal. All 

 along the margin of the river, among the crevices of the 

 rocks and large stones, I was delighted to find (for it was the 

 first time I had ever had ocular proof of the fact) myriads of 

 young eels attempting to make their way upwards. These 

 tiny ifeTurae N nae seemed to find this a journey of much diffi- 

 culty : they were evidently quite incapable of facing the cur- 

 rent*, and had taken shelter on the lee side of the rocks, and 

 were often in conglomerated masses ; and in several instances 

 had wrought and twisted themselves into round balls of from 

 3 in. to 4 in. in diameter, with their heads outwards, forming 

 a most curious but unsightly spectacle. These looked as if 

 they had, in the meantime, given up as hopeless the prospect 

 of all progress upwards ; but I found a few actually crawling 

 in a serpentlike manner up the wet perpendicular sides of the 

 crevices, which showed that they possessed evidently the 

 power of doing this. After this we may wonder the less that 

 eels are found wherever there are streams, or pools of water 

 and mud, or aquatic plants, to cover them. [VII. 601.] I have 

 heard it averred that they have often been met with early in 

 the summer mornings, many yards from water, serpentising 

 amongst the wet grass in search of earthworms, &c. It is 

 requested that correspondents will be so kind as to communi- 

 cate whatever information they may have acquired on this cu- 

 rious and interesting subject. 



\_Lampreys.~] — I have been informed by many old people 

 that lampreys were formerly plentiful in their spawning 

 season in the Tweed, and in its tributaries, the Teviot, Ettrick, 



* A gentleman has informed me that he has repeatedly stopped the 

 progress of the column of eels which annually ascends the Conon, and 

 that they have immediately descended to the bottom, and taken shelter 

 among the gravel and small stones ; but that they, after lying in this way 

 for about two minutes, have begun to ascend to the surface, and, when the 

 obstruction has been removed, to proceed on their way. 



