SARGASSO WEEDS AND WAVES 25 



Is there a moi*e dramatic phenomenom in the world 

 than a whole generation of adult eels of two conti- 

 nents moving majestically in their millions, — set- 

 ting out upon a voyage at the end of which each 

 female will scatter her ten or more million eggs, and 

 from which no eel will ever return! When, within 

 a space of several years, learned ichthyologists 

 wrote confidently of eels descending to salt water 

 and, inside of a month, de230siting their eggs close 

 to shore, we can hardly afford to laugh at Aristotle 

 who, two score centuries ago, stated that eels have 

 no sexes, nor eggs, nor semen, and that they rise 

 from the entrails of the sea. 



So far on this day we had concerned ourselves 

 only with the surface life of the ocean, but now we 

 prepared for some deep sea work. The prelimi- 

 nary was to take soundings to determine how far 

 down the large trawl could be lowered without 

 scraping bottom. The warning word ran round the 

 ship, "Watch your desks, she's going to roll." Of 

 course we had to stop in order to sound, and every- 

 one dreaded it, for it meant that the Arcturus 

 would soon swing into the trough of the sea, and 

 that everything not bolted, wedged, reinforced 

 and clamped would take unto itself roller-skates or 

 wings, or achieve the same effect. Talk about the 

 origin of life upon the earth! no day passed with- 

 out a score of examples, in full speed mutation 

 time, of spontaneous generation, of metamorphoses 

 of ink bottles, jars and filing boxes, into sepia lakes 

 in which swam long preserved fish and over which 

 fluttered innumerable snowflakes of catalogue 



