44 REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES. 



interest, since its apparent lack of paired limbs, its elongated body, 

 and its undulating method of locomotion suggest superficially a 

 close affinity to the reptiles. The idea of "eating snakes" has 

 deterred many people from learning the true value of the eel as an 

 article of food.. 



The remarkable hardiness and tenacity of life which is character- 

 istic of the eel has also often excited wonder. This is probably the 

 source of one of the most interesting of the popular ideas regarding 

 the eel, namely, that the eel has the habit of w^andering around on 

 land in the search of food, or in crossing from one body of water to 

 another. The oldest reference in literature to their supposed wander- 

 ings was made by Albertus Magnus, who remarks, in his book of 

 animals, in 1545, "the eel also comes out of the water in the night 

 time into the fields, where he can find pease, beans, or lentils." The 

 literature for two or three centuries contains many similar statements 

 regarding the nocturnal perigrinations of the eel. For instance. 

 Bach, in his " Natural History of East and West Prussia," 1784, stated 

 that eels were frequently caught in the pea patches in the vicinity 

 of the water; he also goes on to say, "these movements explain the 

 paradoxical fact that in Prussia and Pomerania fish have been caught 

 upon dry land by the use of the plough, for the peasants, in warm 

 nights when the eels are in search of the pease, toward morning when 

 it is not yet day, make furrows with the plough between them and 

 the water, and these are the nets in which the eels are caught." It 

 was Spallanzani, however, who pointed out the error of such opinions 

 when he stated that "in Comacchio, where for many centuries an 

 eel fishery of immense extent has been carried on, although these 

 fish are found in numerous ponds and lagoons, the fishermen have 

 never yet seen an eel wandering over the land; and once when, on 

 account of the drying up of the water, the eels died by the thousand, 

 not one of them made the attempt to escape by a short journey 

 overland into the neighboring lake or into the river Po."* 



* The above quotations are from a communication from Doctor Berthold, of University of 

 Konigsburg, which is given in full in " Natural History of Aquatic Animals," by Goode, U. S. 

 F. C. 1884. page 634. 



