72 HINTS ON ANGLING. 



of the year, swarm in millions about the doors and walls 

 of locks and sluices, in their progress up the rivers, can 

 have no difficulty in believing that such minute animals 

 could be as easily carried from one water to another by a 

 powerful natural agency, as the little frogs which studded 

 the avenue at St. Omer. How are the islands in the 

 great southern ocean constructed and peopled? The 

 coral insect raises his labours above the wave. The sea 

 heaves her sands upon his work. The birds drop their 

 excrements, containing probably seeds which still retain 

 the principle of vitality. The tempests which sweep over 

 those vast wastes of water, come laden with insects, and 

 small reptiles, and the slight germs of animal and vege- 

 table life. The storm-driven savage runs his vagrant 

 canoe into its shallow bays for shelter and security; and 

 the adventurous European is one day- surprised by dis- 

 covering the fertile and peopled isle, where his chart 

 speaks of nothing but interminable waves. All this goes 

 on every day ; and yet we anglers are conjecturing and 

 theorising, how a few little eels, as light as thistle down, 

 can be transported from one water to another, at a dis- 

 tance, it may be, of perhaps a few hundred yards ! * 



Eels increase in numbers most prodigiously. They 

 will also reach a very large size. In Italy a magnificent 



* The bishop of Norwich recently read a paper to some 

 scientific society on this very subject. He had noticed some 

 little eels in the thatch of a cottage, and thence inferred that 

 the spawn had been deposited on the reeds before they were 

 cut, and had been subsequently vivified by the sun's rays. 

 Now, reeds are always thoroughly dried before they are used 

 as thatch ; and this process, we apprehend, would destroy the 

 vitality of the spawn which the bishop seems to think eels 

 deposit. Perhaps his lordship, if these hints should meet his 

 eye, may be induced to prefer the solution in the text. 



