1 84 EELS. 



The London market is principally supplied with Eels from Holland, a country where they 

 abound. According to an estimate made by Mr. Mayhew, no fewer than nine millions seven 

 hundred and ninety-seven thousand seven hundred and sixty Eels are annually sold in 

 Billingsgate market, amounting to a weight of one million five hundred and five thousand 

 two hundred and eighty pounds, one fourth of which is sold by the costermongers. Mr. 

 Mayhew thus graphically describes a visit to the Dutch Eel-boats with their bulging polished 

 oak sides: — "I went to the shore where the watermen ply for passengers to the Eel-boats; 

 they were surrounded by skiffs that ply from the Surrey and Middlesex shores and wait Aj'hilst 

 the fares buy their fish. The holds of these Eel-boats are fitted up with long tanks of muddy 

 water, and the heads of the Eels are seen breathing on the surface, a thick brown bubble 

 rising slowly and floating to the sides. Wooden sabots and large porcelain pipes are ranged 

 round the ledges, and men in tall fur caps, with high cheek bones and rings in their ears, 

 walk the decks. At the stern of one boat was moored a coffin-shaped barge pierced with 

 holes, and hanging in the water were baskets shaped like olive-jars, both to keep the stock 

 of fish alive and fresh. In the centre of the boat stood the scales, a tall, heavy apparatus, 

 one side fitted up with the conical net-bag to hold the Eels, and the other with the weights, 

 and pieces of stone to make up for the extra draught of the water hanging about the fish. 

 When a skiff-load of purchasers arrives, the master Dutchman takes his hands from his pockets, 

 lays down his pipe, and seizing a sort of long-handled landing-net, scoops from the tank a 

 lot of Eels. The purchasers examine them, and try to beat down the price. ' You calls 

 them Eels, do you?' said a man with his bag ready opened. 'Yeas,' answered the Dutch- 

 man, without any show of indignation. 'Certainly there is a few among them,' continued the 

 customer; and after a little more of this kind of chaffering the bargain is struck."* 



But although London is chiefly supplied with Eels from Holland, we must not suppose 

 there are no valuable Eeleries in the British Isles. There is a large Eel-fishery at Toome, 

 on the lower Bann, where from fifty to sixty tons of Eels are annually caught in the migrating 

 season. "As many as seventy thousand Eels," we are told, have been taken at this place 

 in one night, all of the Sharp-nosed species, with the slight exception of, perhaps, a dozen 

 Broad-noses, that have been accidently mixed up with the shoal. "On one night in 1842," 

 observes Mr. Pinkerton, "when I visited the Toome fishery, there were caught in round 

 numbers, eleven thousand Eels. Now, as the persons who purchase the produce of a season's 

 fishing by contract expressly stipulate that they will not take a single Broad-nosed Eel, every 

 Eel — with a dexterity of eye and hand worthy of a Robin or a Frikel, and only acquired by 

 long practice— is carefully counted, and all Broad-nosed ones thrown aside. And on this 

 occasion there were only three Broad-noses in the whole number." f 



There is also an extensive Eel-fishery on the Erne. That Eels were formerly in high 

 repute in England seems clear from the fact that certain places take their names from them. 

 Ely, according to one derivation, has its name from the Eel, the rents being formerly paid 

 in this fish ; the lords of the manors, it is said, being annually entitled to more than one 

 hundred thousand. Elmore and EUesmere are said to have the same derivation. 



As to the question of the wholesomeness of Eel's flesh, there can be no doubt that, owing 

 to the large amount of rich fatty matter which it contains, it is not a diet suited to the stomach 

 of a man of weak digestion, unless eaten in very small quantities. I confine this observation 

 to the flesh of a clean-fed Common Eel ; drain-fed individuals, as well as the offensive 

 Broad-nose, are likely to agree with none but very coarse feeders indeed. It was not 

 the fault of the Lampreys that King Henry died, it was his own fault for eating too 

 much. And although I cannot acquiesce in old Galen's expostulation with the gods for giving 



* London Labour and London Poor, vol. i. p. 66. 

 •f When I visited Toome in July, 1878, the Eel fishery was just commencing; and I saw great numbers packed 

 in boxes which had been caught during the night in the large purse-shaped ne'.s set across the stream of the Bann. 



