18 THE EEL. [CHAP. i. 



enced the greatest difficulty in obtaining recognition as being 

 anything at all in the animal world, or as having respectable 

 parentage of even the humblest kind. In fact, the study of 

 the natural history of the eel has been hampered by old-world 

 romances and quaint fancies about its birth, or, in its case, 

 may I not say invention ? " The eel is born of the mud," said 

 one old author. " It grows out of hairs," said another. " It 

 is the creation of the dews of evening," exclaimed a third. 

 " Nonsense," emphatically uttered a fourth controversialist, 

 " it is produced by means of electricity." " You are all wrong," 

 asserted a fifth, " the eel is generated from turf ; " and a sixth 

 theorist, determined to outdo all the others and come nearer 

 the mark than any of his predecessors, assures the public that 

 the young fish are grown from particles scraped off the old 

 ones ! The beetle theorist tells us that the silver eel is a 

 neuter, having neither milt nor roe, and is therefore quite in- 

 capable of perpetuating its kind ; and, in short, that it is a 

 romance of nature, being one of the productions of some won- 

 drous lepidopterous animals seen by Mr. Cairncross (the 

 author of the work alluded to) about the place where he lived 

 in Forfarshire, its other production being of its own kind, a 

 black beetle ! The story of the rapid growth and transforma- 

 tion of the salmon is as will by and by be seen wonderful 

 enough in its way, but it is certainly far surpassed by the ex- 

 traordinary silver eel, which is at one and the same time a 

 fish and an insect. 



There can be no doubt that the eel is a curious enough 

 animal even without the extra attributes bestowed upon it by 

 this very original naturalist, for that fish is in many respects 

 the opposite of the salmon : it is spawned in the sea, and 

 almost immediately after coming to life proceeds to live in 

 brackish or entirely fresh water. It is another of the curious 

 features of fish life that about the period when eels are on 

 their way to the sea, where they find a suitable spawning- 



