The Compleat ^Angler 



like other fish, but so small as not to be easily discerned, by reason of 

 their fatness ; but that discerned they may be ; and that the he and 

 the she-eel may be distinguished by their fins. And Rondeletius says 

 he has seen eels cling together like dew-worms. 



And others say that eels, growing old, breed other eels out of the 

 corruption of their own age ; which, Sir Francis Bacon says, exceeds 

 not ten years. And others say, that as pearls are made of glutinous 

 dew-drops, which are condensed by the sun's heat in those countries, 

 so eels are bred of a particular dew, falling in the months of May or 

 June on the banks of some particular ponds or rivers (apted by nature 

 for that end), which in a few days are, by the sun's heat, turned into 

 eels ; and some of the ancients have called the eels that are thus bred 

 the offspring of Jove. I have seen, in the beginning of July, in a river 

 not far from Canterbury, some parts of it covered over with young 

 eels, about the thickness of a straw ; and these eels did lie on the top 

 of that water, as thick as motes are said to be in the sun ; and I have 

 heard the like of other rivers, as namely, in Severn (where they are 

 called yelvers), and in a pond, or mere, near unto Staffordshire, where, 

 about a set time in summer, such small eels abound so much that 

 many of the poorer sort of people that inhabit near to it, take such 

 eels out of this mere with sieves or sheets ; and make a kind of eel- 

 cake of them, and eat it like as bread. And Gesner quotes venerable 

 Bede, to say, that in England there is an island called Ely, by reason of 

 the innumerable number of eels that breed in it. But that eels may be 

 bred as some worms, and some kind of bees and wasps are, either of 

 dew, or out of the corruption of the earth, seems to be made probable by 

 the barnacles and young goslings bred by the sun's heat and the rotten 

 planks of an old ship, and hatched of trees ; both which are related for 

 truths by Du Bartas and Lobel, and also by our learned Camden, and 

 laborious Gerard, in his Herbal. 



It is said by Rondeletius, that those eels that are bred in rivers 

 that relate to or be nearer to the sea, never return to the fresh 

 waters (as the salmon does always desire to do), when they have 

 once tasted the salt water ; and I do the more easily believe this, 

 because I am certain that powdered beef is a most excellent bait to 

 catch an eel. And though Sir Francis Bacon will allow the eel's life 



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