6 A BOOK OF THE RUNNING BROOK: 



recognized at least two distinct species of eels. 

 By the Egyptians eels were regarded with great 

 abhorrence as the embodiment of an evil 

 demon ; but other nations did not share the 

 prejudice, for the Boeotians, who were cele- 

 brated for their eels, used them as sacred offer- 

 ings. Misson, in his travels, tells of a vow 

 made by the inhabitants of Terracina, a seaport 

 of Italy, when besieged by the Turks. They 

 vowed to offer twenty thousand eels a year to 

 St. Benedict if he would deliver them from their 

 peril. Whether a fond memory of stewed eels 

 touched the saint we do not know, but the 

 siege was raised, and the Benedictine monks 

 got their eels every year from the virtuous and 

 grateful inhabitants. The Venerable Bede 

 mentions the eel-fisheries of Britain in his 

 " History of the Anglo-Saxon Church," and 

 Thomas a Becket, when he travelled in France, 

 " expended the large sum of a hundred shillings 

 in a dish of eels." Any one who could now sit 

 down to cope with a dish of eels of the value 

 of five pounds would indeed have gastronomic 

 capabilities likely to make an alderman die of 



