174 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



called yelvers ; and in a pond, or mere, near unto Stafford- 

 shire, 9 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 venerable 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,t and also by our learned Camden, and 

 laborious Gerard, J in his Herbal. 



It is said by Kondeletius, 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 Kornan 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 Hortensius was seen to weep at the 

 death of a lamprey that he had kept long and loved exceed- 

 ingly^ 



* The most universal scholar of his time : he was born at Durham about 671, 

 and bred under St. John of Beverley. He was a man of great virtue, and re- 

 markable for a most sweet and engaging disposition : he died 734, and lies 

 buried at Durham. 



t Matthias de Lobel, or L'Obel, an eminent physician and botanist of the 

 sixteenth century, was a native of Lisle, in Flanders. He was a disciple of 

 Eondeletius, and, being invited to London by King James the First, published 

 there his' 4 Historia Plantarum," and died in the year 1616. He was the author 

 of several books connected with medico-botany. 



} The person here mentioned is John Gerard, the first of our English botanists : 

 he was by profession a surgeon ; and published, in 1597, a " Herbal," in a large 

 folio, dedicated to the lord treasurer Burleigh ; and, two years after, a " Cata- 

 logue of Plants, Herbs," &c., to the number of eleven hundred, raised and 

 naturalised by himself in a large garden near his house in Holborn. The latter 

 is dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh. 



The author, vol. i. p. 212, has cited from Pliny an instance of the fondness 



