264: FACT AGAINST FICTIOIS^ 



^yitli eels, to order the body to be re-set in the 

 mud for further capture ; and, as I mentioned 

 before, we have heard of the body of a sweep, in 

 the Ser2)entine, Avho drowned himself for love of 

 beer, not woman, having been fished up, alive with 

 slimy parasites ! All such reports^ whether of the 

 ^'widow's mite" or of the sooty suicide, are 

 utterly ridiculous and untrue ; there is not a 

 cleaner feeder beneath the waters, salt or fresh, 

 than the conger, the snig, or fresh-water eel. 



I remember, as a child, seeing my father take 

 up what he called his ^' eel-wheels," made of 

 wicker, in the tidal brook around the walls of 

 Berkeley Castle, and, so to speak, he never caught 

 anything. In after-life, my experience as a man 

 explained this failure; the bait put into those 

 wheels was the entrails of a chicken. A more 

 fetid, nasty-smelling bait, when it became stale 

 and soddened, cannot be conceived. The only 

 bait that Avill entice a conger eel or snig is fresh 

 fish, or in regard to the fresh- water eels or snigs, 

 similarly, fresh worms. The charge against the 

 method of feeding of the eel as being unclean in 

 simply false and absurd. 



Having discoursed respecting the maimers and 



