FALSE THEORIES OF EEL PROPAGATION 251 



Regardless they their future offspring leave, 

 But porous sands the spumy drops receive. 

 That genial bed impregnates all the heap, 

 And little eelets soon begin to creep." 



Pliny, after making the assertion (taken, as usual, from 

 Aristotle) that among fish the females are larger, and often the 

 more numerous, goes on, an echo once more of " His Master's 

 Voice," to deny to the Eel sex, either masculine or feminine ; 

 according to him, Eels when they had Hved their day, rubbed 

 themselves against the rocks, and their scrapings came to hfe : 

 " they have no other mode of procreation." ^ 



Von Helmont attributed the birth of Eels to the dews of 

 May mornings ! other authors deduced their parentage from 

 the hairs of horses ! others again from the gills of fish ! while 

 the great Izaak Walton insisted on spontaneous generation ! 2 



To solve the insoluble, recourse was, as usual, had to the 

 gods : thus Jupiter and a white-armed goddess yclept Anguilla ^ 

 (the Latin for Eel) were accounted parents of the countless 

 " cousins to the snake." 



Theory was piled upon theory, false conclusions were drawn 

 from falser data. Even as late as 1862 appeared an author, 

 not one whit less certain of the truth of his discovery based " on 

 a series of observations extending over sixty years," or one whit 

 less active in asserting it, than any of his numerous predecessors- 



In The Origin of the Silver Eel, Mr, D. Cairncross propounded 

 the following assertion : " The progenitor of the silver Eel is 

 a small beetle : of this I feel fully satisfied in my own mind, 

 from a rigid and extensive comparison of its structure and 



^ Pliny, IX. 23 and 74, and X. 87. In IX. 38 he asserts that Eels alone of 

 all fish do not float when dead. Aristotle, who {N. H., VIII. 2) is, as usual. 

 his authority, confines himself to noting this characteristic as not possessed 

 " by the majority of fish," and accounts for it by the smallness of stomach, 

 lack of water in it, and want of fat ; he states, however, that when fat they do 

 float. 



^ Accuracy as to procreation was not Father Izaak's strong point, as his 

 theory that pike were bred from pickerel weed shows. It was on this point 

 that Richard Franck, author of Northern Memoirs (written in 1658, but un- 

 published till 1694), with the invincible contempt of the fly-fisher for the bait- 

 fisher, so jumped on Walton, that " he huffed away." See Sir H. Maxwell, 

 op. cit., IV. 123. 



3 Robinson, op. cit., 73. This seems a bit of bogus mythology. Perhaps 

 Natalis Comes may be responsible. 



