CHAP. xiii. THE FOURTH DAY. 135 



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 near 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 to be but ten years, yet he, in his History 

 of Life and Death, mentions a lamprey belonging to the Roman 

 emperor, to be made tame, and so kept for almost threescore 

 years; and that such useful and pleasant observations were 

 made of this lamprey, that Crassus the orator, who kept her, 

 lamented her death. And we read in Dr. Hakewill, that Hor- 

 tensius was seen to weep at the death of a lamprey that he had 

 kept long and loved exceedingly. 



It is granted by all, or most men, that eels, for about six 

 months, that is to say, the six cold months of the year, stir not 

 up and down, neither in the rivers, nor in the pools in which they 

 usually are, but get into the soft earth or mud ; and there many 

 of them together bed themselves, and live without feeding upon 

 anything, as I have told you some swallows have been observed 

 to do in hollow trees, for those cold six months ; and this the eel 

 and swallow do, as not being able to endure winter weather : 

 for Gesner quotes Albertus to say, that in the year 1125, that 

 year's winter being more cold than usually, eels did by nature's 

 instinct get out of the water into a stack of hay in a meadow 

 upon dry ground, and there bedded themselves, but yet at last 

 a frost killed them. And our Camden relates that in Lanca- 

 shire fishes were digged out of the earth with spades, where no 

 water was near to the place. I shall say little more of the eel, 

 but that, as it is observed, he is impatient of cold ; so it hath 

 been observed, that in warm weather an eel has been known to 

 live five days out of the water. 



