1 70 Life and Immortality. 



common and successful method, consisting in bunching a 

 number of earthworms upon a worsted string, and lowering 

 it near the place where the fishes are supposed to be feeding. 

 So eagerly do the voracious fish seize the bait, and so fiercely 

 do they bite, that they are pulled out of the water before 

 they have time to collect their thoughts and disengage their 

 teeth from the string. Night-lines, which are laid in the 

 evening and taken up in the morning, are another plan. But 

 the most successful method is by spearing. The spear used 

 for the purpose is not unlike the conventional trident of 

 Neptune, except that the prongs are four in number, flattened, 

 slightly barbed on each edge, and spread rather widely from 

 their junction with the shaft. This is pushed at random into 

 the muddy banks where the Eels love to lie, and when one is 

 caught, its long snake-like body is wedged in between the 

 jagged prongs and lifted into the boat before it is able to 

 extricate itself. Almost any kind of food that it can master, 

 whether aquatic or terrestrial, is eaten to satisfy the crea- 

 ture's most voracious appetite. Even mice and rats fall 

 victims to its hunger, and an Eel is recorded to have been 

 found floating dead on the water, having been choked to 

 death by a rat which it had essayed to swallow, but which 

 proved too large a morsel for its throat. 



So remarkable is the tenacity of life which this fish pos- 

 sesses, that after the creature has been cut up. into lengths, 

 each separate piece will move as if alive, and at the touch of 

 a pin's point will curve itself as though it felt the injury. 

 When all irritability has ceased, the portions will flounce 

 vigorously about if placed in boiling water, and even after its 

 influence has ceased will, upon the addition of salt, jump 

 about as vigorously as before. There can be no real sensa- 

 tion, let it be understood, as the spinal cord has been severed 

 and all connection with the brain, which is the seat of sensa- 

 tion, has been cut off. 



How the Eel reproduces its kind has long been a subject 

 of discussion. Some held that the young is produced in a 



