134 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PART i. 



mud ; as rats and mice, and many other living creatiirjes^are 

 bred in_ Egypt^ Jhy_he~sun's heat, wheiv^tjhines_upo.n the over- 

 flqwingL.of the river Nilus; or out of the putrefaction 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 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 dis- 

 cerned, 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 worms 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 par- 

 ticular 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 Julv.Jn_a L river not far 

 frorrj^ CanterBuiy,, some parts of it cov^recnsSrwith young eels T 

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

 top of that water, as thick as rnolesjire said to be inthe 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 made 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 in- 

 numerable 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 



