AND FISHING. 137 



language of Margaret Price, the present tenant 

 of the cottage, and Swansea carrier, " it was as 

 thick as her arm,'* and coiled round the pail, 

 from bottom to top ; it was replaced in its former 

 element, where it had subsisted for thirty-one 

 years, upon the animalcules contained in the 

 water. 



The eel was anciently said to possess the power 

 of enforcing sobriety upon the most devoted sub- 

 ject. " If you would make some notorious 

 drunkard to loath and abhorre his beastly vice, 

 and for ever after to hate the drinking of wine, 

 put an eel alive, into some wyde-mouthed bottle 

 with a couer, hauing in it, such a quantity of 

 wine, as may sufficee of it self, to suffocate and 

 strangle the eel ; which done, take out the dead 

 eele, and let the partie whom you would have re- 

 clay med, not knowing hereof, drink of that wine 

 only as much as he listeth." 



On the 4th of August, 1807, a blind man, of the 

 name of John Jones, of Tarporley, near Chester, 

 caught an eel with a line, out of a pit, which eel 

 measured three feet seven inches in length, the 

 girth was nine inches, and the weight six Ibs. 

 The fact is extraordinary, when we recollect how 

 troublesome it is to the angler to land a small 

 eel when hooked. 



Supplement to Daniel's Sports. 



