IV 

 EELS 



NOVEMBER is the season when there is 

 silently taking place through all the broad 

 waters of the land a pilgrimage which exceeds 

 even the annual migration of birds in the interest 

 which attaches to it. The eels are seeking their 

 spawning grounds. It is only within the last few 

 years that science, in the case of the common eel, 

 has found the clue to one of the problems of natural 

 history which for long resisted all attempts to 

 explain it. Up to the date when, some years ago, 

 a paper on the subject was read before the Royal 

 Society, the life-history of the eel remained a subject 

 of mystery and uncertainty. Now that the facts 

 have been in some measure pieced together by patient 

 investigation, the reality has outstripped the imagin- 

 ation of the naturalist, and the life-story of our 

 familiar eel, soberly recounted, reads like a page from 

 the " Arabian Nights." Last spring, as the present 

 writer sat swinging his legs on a low bridge over 

 a river in Somersetshire, there were to be seen in 

 the water beneath thousands of little eels wriggling 

 up-stream in constant procession. It was a sight 

 which was to be witnessed at the same time in many 

 other rivers. The eels in the spring ascend in this 



