THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 173 



most men differ about their breeding : some say they breed 

 by generation as other fish do, and others, that they breed, as 

 some worms do, of mud ; as rats and mice, and many other 

 living creatures are bred in Egypt, by the sun's heat, when 

 it shines upon the overflowing 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 discerned, 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 Hondeletius 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 par- 

 ticular dew, falling in the months of May or June on the 

 banks of some particular 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 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 



* That fishes are furnished with parts fit for generation cannot be doubted, 

 since it is a common practice to castrate them. See the method of doing it in 

 " Philos. Trans." vol. xlviii. part, ii., for the year 1754, page 870. H. 



[I am surprised at the anatomical ignorance of Sir J, Hawkins, and at that 

 of the writer in the " Philosophical Transactions." No river-fish have external 

 organs of generation, and cannot therefore be castrated. Eels have ova and 

 milt like other fresh-water fish, but in minute portions. They are migratory in 

 rivers running into the sea. They migrate to deposit their spawn in salt-water, 

 and immigrate to fresh-water to grow in it. The salmon migrates to sea for a 

 different purpose to grow and fatten in salt-water ; and immigrates to fresh 

 to procreate its species in the shallows. I am of opinion that eels are ovipa- 

 rous, and I know, of my own knowledge, that Mr. Andrew Young, of Invershin, 

 Sutherlandshire, has bred them artifically from impregnated spawn, procured 

 from living male and female specimens. ED.] 



