THE EEL. 331 



Ellis, in his " Polynesian Researches," says, in reference to taming : " In 

 Otaheite eels are great favourites, and are tamed and fed till they attain 

 an enormous size. These pets are kept in large holes, two or three feet 

 deep, partially filled with water. On the sides of these pits they generally 

 remained, except when called by the person who fed them. I have been 

 several times with the yonng chief, when he has sat down by the side of 

 the hole and by giving a shrill sort of whistle has brought out an 

 enormous eel, which has moved about the surface of the water and eaten 

 with confidence out of its master's hand." A Mr. Walter C. Trevelyan 

 also read a paper some years ago before the Wernerian Natural History 

 Society of Edinburgh on the habits of some tame eels, excerpts from which 

 may prove interesting. It seems that in a small pond in a watered 

 garden at Crayd, the seat of David Carnegie, Esq., near Montroae, these 

 eels had been kept for nine or ten years. They used to lie torpid during 

 the winter, or occasionally on an extra warm day would come out in the 

 sunshine, refusing food, however. On the 26th April in the year in 

 question they rose for worms, but they ate sparingly until the warm 

 weather began, when they became quite insatiable. One of them would 

 then swallow twenty-five large worms one after the other. When they 

 were first put into the pond and had no food they devoured one another. 

 They generally lay quietly at the bottom of the pond, except when any 

 of the family went to look into it, when they usually rose to the surface, 

 sometimes for food, and at others merely to play with the hand or take 

 the fingers into their mouths. When trying to cultivate the affections of 

 eels myself I invariably found them very spiteful, and more than once I 

 have got my finger bitten when trying to coax an eel by stroking its head, 

 and the strength of the jaw of this fish is enormous, I can assure the 

 reader. 



The reference in the foregoing to the calling of eels by whistling 

 reminds me that it is quite a question where the auditory apertures are. 

 Mr. Pennell asserts the presence of such an aperture in the head, and I 

 at first thought that the invariable presence of two sub -triangular 

 openings in the fleshy part of the head, just at the junction of the spinal 

 column, justified the assertion. But I read that the Rev. W. Houghton, 

 F.L.S., on inserting a bristle in each of these orifices and clearing away 

 the flesh, found each bristle to have traversed a closed -in tube in the 

 skull, and to have come out just above the bone of the orbit. I find this 

 is correct on careful experiment, and also that the tubes are very thin, 

 and that each one terminates in a fold of membranous tissue just above 

 the eye. The fold contained a thin fluid, like water. What purpose 

 these apertures serve I leave to others to determine, but conjecture that 

 as the optic nerve does not pass in its entirety to the optic lobe of the 



