3t4 THE PRACTICAL FISHERMAN. 



well damped, not, of course, dreaming they would consider their quarters 

 too confined for one moment, or that they could, if they tried, escape 

 between the closed wicker work. As luck would have it, the guard's van 

 being very full, I agreed to place the hamper under the seat of the 

 carriage. This I did opposite me, as, being the only occupant, I could 

 give a glance occasionally at them. At one of the stations an old 

 gentleman of my acquaintance got in, and we instantly fell into conver- 

 sation ; and when a young lady at another time came in and sat on the 

 seat under which the eels were, I did not think to remove them. All of 

 a sudden, after we had started and were going at some thirty miles an 

 hour, the lady screamed, and declared someone was under the seat 

 grasping her ankle. Sure enough, one of the largest eels had protruded 

 its tail and half its body, and had firmly coiled itself around our fair 

 neighbour's ankle, much to her fright, and, sooth to say ungallant as it 

 may seem our infinite amusement. The matter was, however, soon 

 cleared up, and the whole incident ended in a hearty laugh. 



Tenacity of life is also a characteristic which undoubtedly aids the 

 eel in such peregrinations ; but woe to him if excessive cold should 

 unexpectedly set in. Mr. Buckland, in " Curiosities of Natural History," 

 mentions an immense advent of congers to the water's surface, dead, 

 dying, or seriously indisposed, caused by excessive frigidity of the 

 water into which they had penetrated. It is also recorded that no less 

 than 1,800,000 kilogrammes' weight of eels perished through cold in one 

 winter in the marshes of Commachio. 



Indeed, that extremes of temperature are inimical to the well-being of 

 the eel is abundantly proveable. Even Aristotle remarks on the extreme 

 sensibility of the fish to any great or sudden change of temperature, 

 and, writing for his own countrymen, he warns them of the dangers 

 attending their removal from ponds in summer ; he recommends, there- 

 fore, that eel ponds be stocked in winter. In modern times, however, 

 it appears that cold, as before intimated, is the most disliked by eels. 

 Gesner, in the " Annals of Augsberg," says that " one hard winter, when 

 all the pond fish in this locality were frozen or suffocated under the ice, 

 the eels escaped to land, and, getting into some ricks, were found 

 embedded in the hay quite dead." In any case, it is clear that 

 extremely cold climates do not agree with them. There are no eels in 

 the Arctic regions, nor Siberia, nor in the Eussian Volga, nor are some of 

 the more northern parts of the Danube productive of them. 



Yet extreme cold does not seem to kill eels in all cases. Its first effects 

 seem to be to deaden their appetites, and they then seek to bury them- 

 selves in the more equable, if cold, mud of the bottom of the water. 

 During the period they thus remain in a state of torpidity the respiration 



