262 The Life Story of the Fish 



Sargasso Sea, where, according to song and story, the Gulf 

 Stream comes into being, and where abandoned ships drift 

 in a sad circle of their companions until they sink quietly 

 beneath the waves — a perfect setting for the final chapter of 

 one of the greatest of all scientific detective stories, a fitting 

 place for the eel to spawn and die after its long journey 

 across the seas. 



And so the question "where" is answered, but let no 

 ambitious young zoologist be discouraged by lack of worlds 

 to conquer, for the eel problem is still full of "whys" and 

 "hows." The eggs hatch in the late winter or early spring, 

 and the leptocephali of both species start life with a length 

 of about one-quarter of an inch. They start in very close 

 proximity to each other in the Sargasso Sea, and yet one year 

 later those of the American species appear off the American 

 coast, and three years later the little Europeans appear off 

 the European coast. Both have drifted with the Gulf Stream, 

 both have now attained a length of two and one-half to 

 three inches, both are still in the larval condition. How 

 have they managed to separate, and find their respective 

 homes? Each now metamorphoses, in a period of about two 

 months, into a transparent miniature of its parents — ^a so- 

 called "glass eel." How is it that the larval life of the 

 American species takes only one year, just the amount of 

 time necessary to cover the distance to our shore, whereas 

 the larval life of the European takes three years, the amount 

 of time necessary for it to reach the European coasts? In both 

 species, metamorphosis occurs at the proper spot, and the 

 glass eel makes for fresh water in the same continent which 

 its parents inhabited. It is a beautiful arrangement of vari- 

 ables into an equation in timing, in which the speed of the 

 Gulf Stream, the distance from the Sargasso Sea, and the 

 length of time required to reach the stage of metamorphosis, 

 have all been perfectly correlated. 



