THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 161 



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 them 

 spawn ; for they say, that they are certain that Eels have all 

 parts fit for generation, like other fish,f 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 distin- 

 guished by their fins. And Rondeletius 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 pearls 

 are made of glutinous dew-drops, which are condensed 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 Canterbury, some parts of it covered over 

 with young Eeis, 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 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 



* This absurdity appears to hare been implicitly believed by Walton. 

 J. It. 



f 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 Philosophical Transaction*, vol. xlviii. part ii. for the year 

 1754, page 870. 



