CHAPTER Xiy. 



THE EEL. 



Habits and Haunts — Improved Eel-spear — Angling for Eels — 

 Buchs and Wheels — Bobbing — Sniggling — Snaring — An Irish 

 Method. 



WILL not trouble my readers with the con- 

 troversies which have taken place regarding 

 the different varieties of eels. Modern 

 opinion tends to the view that there is only 

 one species of eel, of which species there are, 

 broadly speaking, three varieties in British 

 rivers and lakes — those with broad noses 

 and large mouths, coloured somewhat like 

 tench, and believed by Dr. Day to be sterile females, which have 

 lost the migratory habit ; those which have very pointed noses, 

 and are silvery, except on the back ; and an eel with a nose of 

 medium dimensions. The silver-bellied, pointed-nosed eels are 

 the best eating, the yellow, broad-nosed ladies being decidedly 

 inferior as an article of diet. I need not describe in detail the 

 appearance of eels, for one or more members of the family 

 may be seen in any fishmonger's during the summer months. 

 They are most interesting fish, and I am greatly tempted to 

 write at some length on their peculiarities. Suffice it, how- 

 ever, to say that they are almost ubiquitous, being found in the 

 great majority of rivers and ponds in the world, except where 

 the cold is extreme ; that the silver eels migrate at the end of 

 the summer, unless prevented, to the estuaries of rivers, for 

 the purpose of spawning, most of them remaining in the sea. 



