OBSERVATIONS ON FISHES. 



according to the report I received, were found .with 

 them. 



Feb. 10, 1844. A large eel was found to-day in 

 the stew-hole at Bottisham Hall, deeply imbedded in 

 the mud. The weather this month has been very 

 severe. 



The occurrence of eels during the winter is not 

 very unfrequent. I remember, after the breaking 

 up of the frost in the hard winters of 1814-15 and 

 1829-30, the surface of tljp piece of water in Bottis- 

 ham Park was covered for a time with dead eels of 

 various sizes, which had been killed by the severity 

 of the season.* This circumstance proves what in- 



* This fact was mentioned by me to Mr. Yarrell, who has re- 

 corded it in his "Observations on Eels," published in Jesse's 

 Gleanings in Natural History, 2nd series, p. 71. 



One object of Mr. Yarrell in the "Observations" just alluded 

 to, was to prove that eels are oviparous, like other fishes, and not 

 viviparous, as has been frequently supposed. I have no new evi- 

 dence myself to adduce in illustration of this part of their history, 

 and indeed, I may say, I am almost thoroughly satisfied with the 

 correctness of Mr. Yarrell's views. Yet it maybe well to take this 

 opportunity of calling the attention of naturalists to a communica- 

 tion made to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, in Feb. 

 1839, on the subject of the generation of eels, and the author of 

 which seems to think that he has established the fact of their 

 being viviparous after all. One of his observations in proof of 

 this statement rests on the authority of a countryman who is 

 said to have fished up a large eel on the 20th of March, which he 

 took into his house, and put into a large hollow dish, covering it 

 with another, as he was obliged to return to his work in the fields 

 immediately. What was his astonishment, on coming in again in 

 the evening, and raising the upper dish to get at his eel, to find 

 it surrounded with, it may have been, two hundred young ones, 



