250 TACKLE- CURIOUS METHODS— SI LURUS— EELS 



appealed strongly, to judge by the eulogy that their bodies 

 when being cooked exhaled an odour fragrant enough to restore 

 the sense of smell in the nose of a dead man ! while, if boiled 

 in fine brine, they " changed the human nature into the 

 divine ! " ^ 



The luxurious and lazy Sybarites, who felt they had broken 

 their bones if they but saw another digging, and suffered not a 

 cock in the whole country, lest he should mar their slumber, 

 were so passionately addicted to Eels that all persons catching 

 or selling them were exempt from taxes and tribute. 2 



(C) The propagation of Eels : This has given birth to more 

 theories — all of them till some twenty years ago quite erroneous 

 — than any other ichthyic question. From Aristotle downwards 

 nearly every zoologist, nearly every writer on fish, has advanced 

 his view as to how and whence eels are bred.^ 



Only a few of them, and they all divergent, can find space 

 here. Aristotle held that Eels had never been found with 

 milt or roe, that when opened they did not seem to possess 

 generative organs, and that apparently they came from the 

 so-called entrails of the earth, seemingly referring to certain 

 worms formed spontaneously in mud and the like.* 

 Oppian (I. 513 ff.)— 



" Strange the formation of the eely race 

 That know no sex, yet love the close embrace. 

 Their folded lengths they round each other twine, 

 Twist amorous knots, and slimy bodies joyn ; 

 Till the close strife brings off a frothy juice. 

 The seed that must the wiggling kind produce. 



^ Badham, op. cit., 392. 



2 Athenaeus, XII. 15 and 20. If the fish found favour heHuously, medically 

 condemnation attended it. Hippocrates warns against its use ; Seneca, Nat. 

 Qu., III. 19, 3, terms it " gravis cibus." If to the gastronomic virtues of the 

 MurcenidiB both Greeks and Latins were more than kind, to other characteristics 

 they were far indeed from blind^ — e.g. their slipperiness, etc., was proverbial. 

 See Lucian, Anach., i, and Plautvis, Pseud., II. 4, 57. Further, did the fish but 

 hap in a dream, then good-bye to all hopes and desires, which slipped away, 

 as surely as Alice's " slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe." See 

 Artemidorus, Oneirocritica, II. 14. The phallic character of the fish prevalent 

 in ancient times continues in modern Italy, e.g. the proverbs (i) about 

 holding an Eel by his tail, and (2) that when it has taken the hook, it must go 

 where it is drawn. De Gubernatis, op. cit., II. 341. 



3 For the many classical theories on Eel procreation see Schneider, op. cit., 

 pp. 36 ff. 



« Aristotle, H. A.,lY.ii. 



