THE EEL-FARE 



ONE of the sights of Spring is the "eel-fare," that 

 is to say, the migration of young eels from the 

 sea up the rivers. They are about 2j in. in length, and 

 like a very stout knitting-needle in girth. They come 

 in countless crowds, and they keep on coming for hours 

 sometimes a seemingly endless procession, the head of one 

 almost touching the tail of another, and all hugging the 

 bank or at least avoiding the strong currents. Sunlight 

 seems to be an indispensable stimulus to their persistent 

 ascent of the stream, for when the sun went down behind 

 the hills the procession we were watching suddenly stopped, 

 the elvers had sunk into the mud or hidden beneath stones. 

 The sunset is their rest signal. Their brain is wound up 

 to go on straight on and wonderful feats are recorded 

 in the way of s warming-up the sides of waterfalls and 

 overcoming other obstacles. It has been said that those 

 that are going to be females go much farther up-stream 

 than those that are going to be males ; but this lacks 

 corroboration. It sounds rather like an ex parte asser- 

 tion. 



These migrating elvers have been well known to field- 

 naturalists for many centuries, but it is only within recent 

 years that we have been able to tell whence they come and 

 whither they go. It seems that all the eels of North and 

 West Europe come from deep water in the Atlantic to the 

 west of the British Isles and France, and perhaps as far 



south as the Canaries the apparent spawning-grounds 



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