240 T1IE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. 



cold sir months : and this the eel and swallow do, as not 

 being able to endure winter- weather : for Gesner quotes 

 Albertus to say, that in the year 1125, that year's winter 

 being more cold than usually, eels did by nature's instinct 

 get out of the water into a stack of hay in a meadow upon 

 dry ground, 1 and there bedded themselves ; but yet at last 

 a frost killed them. And our Camden relates, that in 

 Lancashire, fishes were digged out of the earth with 

 spades, where no water was near to the place. 2 I shall 

 say little more of the eel, but that, as it is observed he 

 is impatient of cold, so it hath been observed that, in 

 warm weather, an eel has been known to live five days out of 

 the water. 



And lastly, let me tell you that some curious searchers 

 into the natures of fish, observe that there be several sorts 

 or kinds of eels : as the silver eel, and green or greenish 

 eel, with which the river of Thames abounds, and those are 

 called grigs ; and a blackish eel, whose head is more flat and 

 bigger than ordinary eels ; and also an eel whose fins are 

 reddish and but seldom taken in this nation, and yet taken 

 sometimes. These several kinds of eels are, say some, 

 diversely .bred ; and namely, out of the corruption of the 

 earth, and some by dew, and other ways, as I have said to 

 you : and yet it is affirmed by some for a certain, that the 

 silver eel is bred by generation; but not by spawning as 

 other fish do, but that her brood come alive from her, being 

 then little live eels no bigger nor longer than a pin : and I 

 have had too many testimonies of this to doubt the truth of 



1 Dr. Plot, in his " History of Staffordshire," page 242, mentions certain 

 waters, and a pool, that were stocked by eels that had, from waters they 

 liked not, travelled "in arido," or over dry land, to these other. H. 



2 Camden's relation is to this effect, viz. "That, at a place called 

 Sefton, in the above county, upon turning up the turf, men find a black 

 deadish water with small fishes therein." "Britannia, Lancashire." 

 Fuller, who also reports this strange fact, humorously says : " That the 

 men of this place go a-fishing with spades and mattocks ; " adding that 

 fishes are thus found in the country about Heraclea and Tius, in Pontus. H. 

 The fact is, that eels will leave a pond and travel over land to a neighbour- 

 ing brook or river in order to get to the sea ; and eels taken out of a pond 

 when the migratory instinct is upon them and put on a grass field or 

 meadow, will make their way to the nearest point of a river. Eels will 

 also leave a river at night, and get into the adjoining meadows to feed on 

 worms. ED. 



