CHAP. XIII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 179 



of the ancients have called the Eels that are thus bred the 

 offspring of Jove. I have seen in the beginning of July, in a 

 river not far from Canterbury, some parts of it covered over 

 with young Eels, about the thickness of a straw ; and these Eels 

 did lie on the top of that water, as thick as motes are said to 

 be in the 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 make a kind of Eel-cake 

 of them, and eat it like as bread. And Gesner quotes Vener- 

 able Bede to say, that in England there is an island called Ely, 

 by reason of the innumerable 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 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 Cam- 

 den, and laborious Gerard in his Herbal. 



It is said by Rondeletius, that those Eels that are bred in 

 rivers that relate to or be nearer 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 be- 

 lieve 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 ob- 

 servations were made of this Lamprey, that Crassus the orator, 

 who kept her, lamented her death. And we read in Doctor 

 Hakewill, that Hortensius was seen to weep at the death of a 

 Lamprey that he had kept long, and loved exceedingly. 



