136 ANECDOTES OF FISHES 



Common eels will grow to a large size ; they are 

 noticed by Mr. Pennant sometimes to weigh twenty 

 pounds ; one was taken out of the Kennet, near 

 Newbury, which weighed fifteen pounds. Walton 

 mentions one, caught near Peterborough, which 

 was a yard and three quarters in length. 



About Michaelmas, 1741, at an eel fishery in 

 Thelwill, Cheshire, the fishermen caught in one 

 night a ton weight of eels, which were supposed 

 to be striving to go down to the sea. 



Kirby's Anglers' Museum. 



A curious fact in the history of the eel, is, 

 that a number of them, both old and young, 

 were found in a subterraneous pool at the bottom 

 of an old quarry, which had been filled up, and 

 its surface ploughed and cropped for a dozen 

 years. Wernenan Society, 1808. 



The longevity and abstemiousness of eels was 

 ascertained in 1812. John Meredith, an officer 

 of the Excise, who resided in a cottage at Lan- 

 vace, Brecon, in 1781, put a small eel into a well 

 in his garden ; this well is about nine feet deep, 

 and three in diameter, but seldom contains more 

 than two feet of water, without the River Usk is 

 swelled by floods. On a recent inundation, the 

 eel above mentioned appeared on the surface, 

 and was caught in a pail ; when, to use the 



