32 ORIGIN OF THE SILVEE EEL. 



At the top of this marsh was a well, and 

 stretching from it was a ditch, which ran 

 towards a cutting 100 yards square, and 

 four feet deep, dug a hundred years before 

 for turf. A skin of grass covered its 

 surface. At the age of thirteen, I frequently 

 saw, among the grass and clear water, great 

 numbers of eels and dead beetles, but none 

 in the act of parturition. How they came 

 there I could not at that time under- 

 stand. In this place I have also seen 

 eels of immense size. One sprang up in 

 pursuit of a shoal of young ones which 

 I am certain must have been five feet long, 

 and four inches in diameter. Now, why 

 I mention this matter is simply to say 

 that the attacks of the larger eels in some 

 measure accounts for the emigration of the 

 younger ones. I also believe that many of 

 these monster eels lie in these localities 

 twenty years before emigration. 



We have another species of eel that 

 spawns in our rivers, called the lamprey 

 eel. I captured one in autumn as full of 

 roe as would stock a river. There could 

 not have been less than 20,000 in it. 



