ORIGIN OF THE SILVER EEL. 15 



I could not believe that water could make 

 hair live. On being left alone I still gazed 

 upon the water, and again counted the eels. 

 While so employed, I saw a number of 

 beetles lying at the bottom of it, on their 

 backs, dead. There were eight of them. This 

 excited my curiosity. I wondered and con- 

 sidered long as to what brought them to 

 the water. Their position also struck me. 

 Surely they did not come down to drown 

 themselves. I immediately captured a few 

 and immersed them, but they were out of 

 the water in a moment. The query that 

 now rose in my mind was, if there could be 

 any connection between the eels and the 

 beetles, no other animal being visible in the 

 drain, themselves excepted. Believing they 

 did not come there for the purpose of self- 

 destruction, and unable to trace any con- 

 nection between them, I returned to the 

 school on Monday, but often did my mind 

 revert to the mystery. 



I stayed at home for the next six years ; 

 and in bogs and rivulets I often saw 

 swarms of hair eels, sometimes finding them, 

 while fishing, in the mouth of a trout, half- 



