50 
again, imagination seems to have mixed up facts with fiction, 
and it has been maintained that should very young ones be 
introduced from the mouths of rivers into inland pieces of 
water, they invariably develop into fish of the female sex, as 
it was supposed males were never to be seen in fresh water. 
Whether these waters are really conducive to the destruction 
of young male Hels appears to be a subject requiring further 
elucidation. 
The female Hels are those which are usually captured when 
descending towards the mouths of rivers during the autumn 
months, while such as are developing towards a breeding con- 
dition do not seem to feed at these periods. Males have been 
usually obtained from the mouths of rivers or in brackish 
waters; and Dr Pav, having discovered that among elvers 
captured from near this locality a considerable percentage were 
males, ascertained (at least so he asserts) that, when transported 
to fresh waters, they there retained their masculine character, 
developing into adults. Some have been captured ten or twelve 
miles up rivers, and, although male Hels undoubtedly ascend 
rivers, their proportionate numbers to that of females decreases 
in accordance to distance from the sea. 
Sterile Hels are found in fresh waters, and likewise in those 
which are brackish, where they may often be captured feeding. 
But these fish of course cannot increase in numbers unless they 
have access to the sea, consequently above impassable barriers 
they die out, should no young be introduced.* 
The migrations of these fishes may be said to be two annu- 
ally, adults descending seawards to breed, as they do in the 
Severn, about the month of September, but which migration in 
Norfolk is asserted to begin as early as July. There is likewise 
an up-stream migration of young Hels or Elvers+ in the earlier 
* The reader is referred to a most interesting paper upon Eels, which 
has been published in the Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission 
for 1881. 
+ Mr Wixt1s-Bunp, Chairman ef the Severn Fishery Board, writes as 
follows of the migrations of these fishes in the lower Teme and Severn 
Fisheries above Worcester :—‘‘ The first that ascend the river are called 
Elvers, they come in March and April ; then come a larger and darker form, - 
