94 fish Cultural Association. 
over its sides during a shower which had taken place. This 
result seemed at first to cast doubt upon all my conclu- 
sions, but when I discovered, as I did by accident, the true 
explanation, it confirmed, as I have said, my previous de- 
ductions. The sides of the preserves were boarded up, and 
the water had worked its way through a knot-hole, not into 
the lower preserve from the upper one, but directly into the 
stream. The eels had found this out, although it was wholly 
under ground, not much larger than a lead pencil, and not 
visible on the surface, and had followed it down all together> 
and the moment it offered them a passage to the salt-water 
without danger of encountering the ravenous jaws of their 
"enemies in the lower preserve. Nothing could prove more 
conclusively that the eel-fry were descending and not 
ascending the brook than their immediately taking advan- 
tage of this opportunity when it presented itself. They had 
undoubtedly been waiting for just such an event. When I 
discovered it and proceeded to fill it up, I exhumed an eel 
of nine inches length remaining in it, and waiting, perhaps, 
to devour such of his brethren as might come along and 
were ‘of. appropriate ‘size: I “ean’see no escape from: ithe mime 
evitable conclusion from these experiments. 
The accepted opinion of their method of reproduction 
goes on the idea that they deposit their spawn in the salt- 
water during the winter or early spring months; that the 
spawn hatches in the months of April and May, and that the 
young ascend the streams in May to find some suitable mud- 
endowed pond where they can live, luxuriate, eat, and grow 
fat. All this is contrary to the habits of every known va- 
riety of fish, and was only approved after considerable inves- 
tigation, and on what seemed sufficient evidence; but there 
was always more or less doubt about it, and it required the 
