CHAPTER XIII. OBSERVATIONS OF THE EEL, AND 

 OTHER FISH THAT WANT SCALES, AND HOW 

 TO FISH FOR THEM 



PISCATOR 



IT is agreed by most men, that the Eel is a most dainty fish ; 

 the Romans have esteemed her the Helena of their feasts, 

 and some the Queen of palate-pleasure. But most men 

 differ about their breeding: some say they breed by genera- 

 tion as other fish do, and others, that they breed as some 

 worms do, of mud, as rats and mice, and many other living 

 creatures are bred in Egypt, by the Sun's heat when it shines 

 upon the overflowing of the river Nilus : or out of the putre- 

 faction of the earth, and divers other ways. Those that deny 

 them to breed by generation as other fish do, ask, if any man 

 ever saw an Eel to have a spawn or melt? and they are 

 answered, that they may be as certain of their breeding as if 

 they had seen them spawn : for they say, that they are certain 

 that Eels have all parts fit for generation, like other fish, but 

 so small as not to be easily discerned, by reason of their fat- 

 ness, 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 



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