HABITS OF THE EEL. 203 



bands, myriads upon myriads in a serried phalanx, which 

 throws off immense detachments at every ditch and pool : 

 this migration the French call la montee. In autumn 

 they descend towards the sea; and you will find them 

 swarming in thousands in the creeks and channels to 

 which they are conducted by the barriers and embank- 

 ments of the fishermen. They prefer to accomplish their 

 migratory movements at night. Sometimes, when a 

 failure of their food-supply, or other cause, induces them 

 to change their quarters, they traverse a considerable 

 extent of land to reach a suitable locality. Mr. Yarrell 

 justly says that of this circumstance there can be no 

 doubt. When grass meadows are wet from dew, he says, 

 they travel during the night over the moist surface in 

 search of frogs or their usual food. Some ponds contin- 

 ually produce eels however desirous their owners may 

 be to keep them out, from a knowledge of the havoc they 

 commit among the spawn and fry of other fishes. It 

 may happen that in other ponds they will refuse to stay- 

 on account, perhaps, of some obnoxious quality in the 

 water ; and though again and again introduced, they will 

 leave the uncongenial locality during the night, and be- 

 take themselves elsewhere. 



During the cold months of the year they remain im- 

 bedded in the mud ; and large quantities are frequently 

 taken by eel-spears in the soft soils, and harbours, and 

 banks of rivers, from which the tide recedes and leaves 

 the surface exposed for several hours every day. The 

 sensitive fish, which are unable to endure any sudden 

 depressions of temperature, and avoid all ice-cold waters, 

 bury themselves, fully a foot deep or more, near the edge 

 of the navigable channel, and generally near some of the 



