xvii. EELS AND ELVERS. 241 



air into each of his gill-chambers. Back to your native 

 element, my little friend ! He wriggles with a splash into 

 the water, dives to the bottom among the weeds, yawns 

 largely, and ejects the air from the gill-chambers, and, 

 panting, breathes with avidity the sweet fresh water. In 

 half an hour he will have recovered his tone and his colour, 

 and will be sporting with his fellows in the sunlit patch. 



Let us return now to the streamlet from which I obtained 

 my little fish. Whence come these myriad elvers and 

 whither do they go ? There has been much uncertainty 

 with regard to the mode of propagation of eels. Of old 

 they were believed to arise by spontaneous generation in 

 the mud. And there can be little doubt that from the 

 mud they come. Mr. R. C. Couch in 1847 took a quantity 

 of rnud from a spot much frequented by eels, and after 

 carefully examining it was at last gratified by observing 

 the eels, small and transparent, lying on the surface almost 

 motionless. They rapidly grew, and in ten days acquired 

 strength and size to swim about. From the mud they 

 come ; but of the mud they are not formed. How and 

 when the mother eel deposits her spawn we do not certainly 

 know ; but we may rest satisfied that she does there deposit 

 the life germs which, when duly fertilized, shall swarm up 

 the streamlets as the myriad elvers. 



These little fishes seem always to carry on their upward 

 migrations by day, and, as I have said, in countless numbers. 

 They are, I am told, in Bristol taken out in sieves, fried and 

 sold for a few pence the pound ; forming a very nutritious 

 and appetizing dish for those who have no Egyptian or 

 Scottish antipathy to eels as food. Their power of surmount- 

 ing obstacles to their onward progress is extraordinary. Mr. 

 Jesse says that in the neighbourhood of Bristol but where 

 I know not there is or was a large pond, immediately 

 adjoining which was a stream. On the bank between these 



R 



