310 FISH OUT OF WATER 



discovering where, when, or how they manage to spawn ; 

 nobody has ever yet seen an eel's egg, or caught a 

 female eel in the spawning condition, or even observed 

 a really adult male or female specimen of perfect deve- 

 lopment. All the eels ever found in fresh water are 

 immature and undeveloped creatures. But eels do cer- 

 tainly spawn somewhere or other in the deep sea, and 

 every year, in the course of the summer, flocks of young 

 ones, known as elvers, ascend the rivers in enormous 

 quantities, like a vast army under numberless leaders. At 

 each tributary or affluent, be it river, brook, stream, or 

 ditch, a proportionate detachment of the main body is 

 given off to explore the various branches, while the 

 central force wriggles its way up the chief channel, regard- 

 less of obstacles, with undiminished vigour. When the 

 young elvers come to a weir, a wall, a floodgate, or a 

 lasher, they simply squirm their way up the perpendicular 

 barrier with indescribable wrigglings, as if they were 

 wholly unacquainted, physically as well as mentally, with 

 Newton's magnificent discovery of gravitation. Nothing 

 stops them ; they go wherever water is to be found ; and 

 though millions perish hopelessly in the attempt, millions 

 more survive in the end to attain their goal in the upper 

 reaches. They even seem to scent ponds or lakes mys- 

 teriously, at a distance, and will strike boldly straight across 

 country, to sheets of water wholly cut off from communi- 

 cation with the river which forms their chief highway. 



The full-grown eels are also given to journeying across 

 country in a more sober, sedate, and dignified manner, as 

 becomes fish which have fully arrived at years, or rather 

 months, of discretion. When the ponds in which they 

 live dry up in summer, they make in a bee-line for the 

 nearest sheet of fresh water, whose direction and distance 

 they appear to know intuitively, through some strange 



