WHIRLPOOLS 



Lacking mouths, these larvae grow until they are 

 twice the length of their egg-cases, but they are still only 

 two-fifths of an inch long. Fifteen months have now 

 elapsed since they were born, and they are still three- 

 quarters of a mile below the surface. They are now 

 termed "leptocephali" by man. The moment has arrived 

 for them to rise through the 3,000-odd feet of water to 

 the surface. Many have died down there in the icy 

 currents. Why did the mothers go down, seeing that eels 

 naturally love the warmer water? Science has no 

 explanation. Why did migrating eels, in their long home- 

 ward journeys to the Sargasso, go down into the colder 

 waters and the far greater pressures? Again, there is no 

 explanation. 



The leptocephali are now on the surface again, where 

 they mingle with the plankton, and — with their mouths, 

 which they have so miraculously developed — begin to 

 feed voraciously. As they feed they penetrate outward 

 from the Sargasso into the Gulf Stream, and are slowly 

 swept by it towards the European coasts, so that one of 

 the most remarkable life-cycles in all natural history 

 begins all over again. 



Is it all the work of blind chance? It surely requires 

 more credulity than any observer possesses to believe that 

 the entire complicated, ingenious process can be ex- 

 plained from any mechanistic, materialistic view-point. 



In their long journeys from the Sargasso whirlpool 

 across vast stretches of water to their mating-places high 

 up in many of the world's rivers, and back again to their 

 Sargasso breeding grounds, eels link distant reaches of 

 the oceans with areas of the world's coastlines. We now 

 journey with them in imagination, inward from the 

 spinning whirlpools to the shores, to find new fields of 

 fascinating interest awaiting us. 



109 



