THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 2I/ 



their fins. And Rondeletius says he has seen eels 

 cling together like dew-worms. 



And others say that eels, growing old, breed 

 other eels out of the corruption of their own age, 

 which, Sir Francis Bacon says, exceeds not ten 

 years. And others say that as pearls are made of 

 glutinous dew-drops, which are condensed by the 

 sun's heat in those countries, so eels are bred of 

 a particular dew, falling in the months of May or 

 June on the banks of some particular ponds or 

 rivers, apted by nature for that end ; which in a 

 few days are by the sun's heat turned into eels ; 

 and some of the ancients have called the eels that 

 are thus bred the offspring of Jove. I have seen in 

 the beginning of July, in a river not far from Canter- 

 bury, some parts of it covered over with young eels, 

 about the thickness of a straw ; and these eels did 

 lie on the top of that water, as thick as motes are 

 said to be in the sun ; and I have heard the like of 

 other rivers, as namely in Severn, where they are 

 called yelvers ; and in a pond or mere near unto 

 Staffordshire, where about a set time in summer 

 such small eels abound so much that many of the 

 poorer sort of people that inhabit near to it take 

 such eels out of this mere with sieves or sheets, and 

 make a kind of eel-cake of them, and eat it like as 

 bread. And Gesner quotes Venerable Bede to say 

 that in England there is an island called Ely, by 

 reason of the innumerable number of eels that 

 breed in it. But that eels may be bred as some 

 worms and some kind of bees and wasps are, 



