THE EEL. 279 



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 genera- 

 tion, 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 distin- 

 guished by their fins. And Rondeletius says he has seen 

 eels cling together like dew-worms. 1 



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 con- 

 densed 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 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 Can- 

 terbury, 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 



