292 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
educated modern specialist. Thus, ages ago, in the remotest 
past to which we can trace language, Aryan man had asso- 
ciated the sound agh or angh with the idea of choking. The 
property of snakes which impressed him most was neither 
their poisonous fangs nor their prostrate attitude, but the 
power of the larger snakes to squeeze. Hence he came to 
speak of a snake as aghi, nasalised anghi, the choker, just 
as men of science have designated the largest known snake 
as Boa constrictor—the choker par excellence. Then small snakes 
required a diminutive term, which took the form of agh/a, 
or anghla, appearing in Latin as anguilla, an eel, diminutive 
of anguis, a snake, and in Greek as €yis, a snake, éyxedvs, an 
eel. Whether the root word found its way into Germanic 
speech through Latin, or independently, is not very clear, 
but at all events there it is, in Anglo-Saxon, German, 
Icelandic, and so on. The eel is ineradicably the little 
snake ; and just as men of every race entertain an instinctive 
horror for snakes, so there remain traces of the same feeling 
about eels. It is true that most civilised races have overcome 
this long ago, and eels are so well thought of as food in this 
country that we import very large supplies from Holland. 
Yet, although there is no more intelligent and practical 
peasantry in the world than the Scots, there exists among them 
a strong and universal prejudice against eels. The waters of 
Scotland abound in eels, but you will find never a Scot who 
does not treat with shuddering or contempt the idea of eating 
one. I myself, though I have eaten eels (without much relish), 
must confess to a feeling of dislike to the creature. Its 
stealthy, gliding motion in the water, its powerful contortions 
in the hand and its extraordinary tenacity of life, are associated 
with the idea of something “uncanny” and malign. However, 
this is all nonsense, of course ; the eel is excellent, nutritious 
food, whereof the supply is in no danger of running short in 
the British Isles. On the contrary, the resources of our waters 
in the matter of eels is well-nigh inexhaustible, and it is to be 
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