AUGUILLA. 233 



for we have seen an eel more than twenty yards 

 from a river, making its way to it like a snake 

 through the grass of a rnoist meadow ; and what 

 is perhaps more uncommon, we have watched an 

 eel rising repeatedly to the surface of a stream to 

 bite off and feed upon the duck-weed floating at 

 the top. 



An amazing number of eels are bred in the two 

 large ponds in Richmond Park, which is suffi- 

 ciently evident from the very great quantity of 

 young ones which migrate from those ponds every 

 year. We are assured that at nearly the same 

 day, in the month of May, vast numbers of young 

 eels, about two inches in length, contrived to get 

 through the pen-stock of the upper pond, and 

 then through the channel which led into the low- 

 er pond, from whence they got through another 

 pen-stock into a water course, which led them 

 eventually into the river Thames. They migra- 

 ted in one connected shoal, and in such prodigious 

 numbers, that no guess could be given as to their 

 probable amount. 



An annual migration of young eels also takes 

 place in the river Thames in the month of May ; 

 and they have generally made their appearance 

 at Kingston, in their way upwards, about the sec- 

 ond week in that month, and accident has so de- 

 termined it, that for several years together it was 



