From Fox's Earth 



Channel, they seek their way to the westerly goal. 

 Those from the more northerly streams may 

 choose the shorter route round the north of 

 Scotland. 



Onward they go, with the precision of an army 

 on the march, or a flight of migrant birds, which 

 follow the same route, year by year. By ocean 

 valleys, or along water-dimmed slopes they go. 

 Possibly they join forces by the way, to swell the 

 number of the main body. Of the marked speci- 

 mens caught at the various stages of the journey, 

 one was found to have covered upward of four 

 hundred miles in fifty-one days. 



This little flooded burn is an unconsidered item 

 in the drainage system. Still it has the beginning 

 and the end of the story. So that, whatever takes 

 place elsewhere is gone through here. The eel 

 just put back, if it survived, would with all the 

 other eels leave by and by. When they reached 

 where the current met the waves, they would 

 turn to the right, or to the left. Being so far 

 north, they would be likely to choose the left. At 

 the rate of fifteen or twenty miles a day, they 

 would pass up the east coast. In three weeks 

 they would round Cape Wrath. A month later 

 they would reach the deep water and the breeding 

 ground. 



There they would shed their now ripened eggs, 

 to float midway between the bottom and the 

 surface and, having done so, would die. In due 



7 6 



