THE EEL. 849 



Cambridgeshire ; it was exhibited there, skinned, and the flesh sold, the 

 skin was preserved. I regret to add that Mr. Buckland, in a foot note, 

 cannot help thinking that the fish was a conger. 



He goes on, however, to state that eels, of which there can be no doubt 

 as to species, were taken at Tewkesbury, 7|lb. ; at Graypak, Petworth, 

 51b. ; in the Arun one of 91b. ; in one of the Norfolk Broads one of 71b. ; 

 near New Mills, Norwich, one of 7ilb. ; another on the 13th Jannary, 1869, 

 8|lb. at the very same spot. I myself saw one which probably had 

 escaped from Virginia Water, and which was taken at Staines, of 81b. 

 weight. These weights seem to me the maxima of those to which English 

 eels attain in these degenerate modern days. 



Badham, in " Prose Haleutics," however, refers to some continental 

 monsters of the eel family. He speaks of France, Narbonne, and Mont- 

 pellier, as ranking high on account of the bigness of their eels. Aldrovandus 

 speaks also of some weighing 201b., and Eondelet records others from 

 the same locality of four cubits long and as thick as a man's arm. 

 Badham further says that the Seine, near Elboeuf, swarms with them. 

 " In Prussia they attain occasionally a length of 12ft., in the Elbe 

 specimens occur of 601b. weight, and in the Ganges orientals stretch 

 to upwards of 30ft." We cannot doubt Yarrell when he says : "I saw 

 at Cambridge the preserved skins of two which weighed together 501b. 

 the heaviest 271b., the second 231b. They were taken on draining a 

 fendyke at Wisbech. No other fish of any sort were found in that 

 dyke." There is, however, considerable suspicion in my mind that the 

 specimens were congers naturalised. 



The enemies of eels are not very many. Pike and salmon are fond of 

 them as bait, others also are very partial to this fish, and the barn rat is 

 also, I know, an obtrusive friend as it also is to roach. (See Chapter XIV.) 

 Mr. Pennell gives a remarkable instance, as detailed by a Mr. Hardy, 

 of this rodent's partiality. "In February last" says Mr. Hardy, "when 

 walking by the side of the Mill Race at Swalwell, near Newcastle-upon- 

 Tyne, we noticed a common house rat making its way close by the edge 

 of the water among the coarse stones that form the embankment. 

 Curious to know what it could be doing there, we noticed its progress 

 downwards until it reached the outlet of a drain, into which it had just 

 turned, when it gave a sudden plunge and as quickly reappeared in the 

 stream with a middling-sized eel in its mouth. It made for the edge, 

 where it soon regained its footing, a matter, owing to the steepness of the 

 bank, of some difficulty, increased by the struggles of the eel which it had 

 seized a little below the tail, and which was exciting itself vigorously to get 

 free. The rat attempted to run forward and turn a corner, where on a 

 broader edge it might, perhaps, have luck in its fishing ; but the desperate 



