116 SOME FISHES OF THE DISTRICT. 
by water birds, and eventually hatch out. The pike is a long 
lived fish, and under favourable circumstances will survive 
seventy or eighty years, and its usual breeding season is 
during the months of March, April, and May. ‘he ova are 
very small, and the number of them varies from fifty-thousand 
up to half-a-million. 
The Eel is the most numerous of all the British fresh water 
fishes, but it is only within quite recent years that it has been 
ascertained with any certainty where and when they breed. 
Recent research and observation have established the fact 
that they go down to the sea to lay their eggs, but whether 
they are deposited in. the shallow waters at the mouths of 
rivers or in the deep sea, has not yet being found out. 
The downward migration commences in September and 
October, or even earlier in some rivers, and they then 
“run,” as it is called, in enormous quantities, so much so, 
that at the great eel fishery at Toome, on the lower Bann, 
in Ireland, as many as seventy-thousand have been taken 
in one night. There is an eel trap at Peel’s old mill, at 
Drakelowe weir just above Burton, and here six large sacks 
have been filled ina day. It is a curious thing that, after 
they have spawned, they do not seem to return to fresh 
water, or if any do, the number is so small that they are 
hardly ever seen. In the early months of the year, the 
young eels that have been hatched in the salt water begin 
to go up stream in countless thousands, and some rivers are 
said to be positively black with the multitude of them. There 
are two sorts of eel, generally described as the broad-nosed, 
and the sharp-nosed, and they have for many years been 
looked on as distinct species, but Dr. Francis Day now says 
that the broad-nosed eel is the male, and the sharpnosed 
the female, of the same species. Eels grow to a large size, 
and one was recorded in the Daily Telegraph of October roth, 
1893, that was taken from the river Nene near Wisbech, that 
weighed 37-lbs. and was nearly six feet in length. 
