82 
‘conditions such that we can neither affect the supply 
favourably or unfavourably by any effort of ours. Or, to put 
it in other words, Nature’s laboratory or workshop, Old 
Ocean, where she manufactures the food fishes, &c., is on 
such a gigantic scale, and the portion our limited powers of 
mind and body can affect is so infinitesimal, that nothing we 
can do can seriously affect even this portion. In regard to 
the larger part, until we are qualified to take the direction of 
the great forces of Nature out of the hands of the Infinite, 
it is hopeless'to expect we can in any way affect it. 
It is an instructive fact that the results of original 
research, while of fascinating interest to us as naturalists, if 
they show us one thing more clearly than another, it is our 
utter helplessness to control matters. Probably no discovery 
in natural history is more startling in itself, or more conclu- 
sive in this respect, than the working out within the last two 
or three years of the early stages of the life history of our 
common fresh-water eel, a subject that has puzzled and 
interested naturalists since Aristotle’s time. I quote from 
Sir John Lubbock’s speech at the opening of the Inter- 
national Congress of Zoologists last year at Cambridge :— 
‘ Until quite recently its life history was absolutely unknown. 
Aristotle pointed out that ‘eels were neither male nor female, 
and that their eggs were unknown.’ This remained true 
until a year or two ago. No one had ever seen the egg of 
an eel, or a young eel less than five centimetres (14 inch) in 
