EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING. 33 
bedded in the mud, and when they could not unite with the 
male. But it subsequently appeared that the parent eels, to 
which Mr. Baird referred, had been caught in the fall of the 
year, when they were in full activity, and in the fresh water pre- 
paratory to spawning. I believe they were part of those taken 
by Mr. Atkins in Maine, a locality in which it was probable that 
the eg¢es would mature more early than with us. 
At the pregent there is no doubt about the truth of Professor 
Baird’s discovery. The action of this Society andthe discussion 
before it attracted public attention to the characteristics of eels, 
which for two thousand years had been a stumbling-block to the 
physiologists. Valuable information came pouring in from all 
quarters, and although there was, as there always had been, 
much contradiction as to fact and opinion, important progress 
was made in our knowledge. The received theories of the des- 
cent of the mature fish to the sea in autumn to spawn, and the 
ascent of the young in spring to the fresh waters to grow were 
discredited, and if not disproved, are now shown to be at least 
exceedingly doubtful, or at the utmost local, while their entire 
method of reproduction is being freed from the strange theories 
which once surrounded it. It isno longer supposed that eels 
are hermaphrodite—the two sexes united in one fish—as occurs 
only with the lower forms of animal life, nor that they produce 
their young alive, nor that they have more than one heart in 
their bodies, although we have not yet ascertained accurately 
where and when they spawn, nor has an impregnated egg or 
milt, or a living spermatozoon been obtained. 
The presence of the eggs in the spawning fish was so appar- 
ent when the proper part was examined, that it seemed impossi- 
ble that any difficulty could have ever arisen about it. And it 
now appears that many investigators claimed to know of the ex- 
istence of the eggs, and had seen them previously. Notwith- 
standing these posthumous discoveries and assertions which al- 
ways appear in such cases, to Mr. Atkins, Professor Baird, and 
especially to Mr. Eugene G. Blackford, who popularized the 
discovery and confirmed it, is due the credit of being the first 
persons who, in the course of two thousand years of experi- 
ment, discovered the procreative methods and organs of the 
