84 FISH CULTURAL ASSOCIATION, 
a tub on the deck of a vessel while on Lake Ontario, and they 
were often taken in this manner through the Welland Canal. 
He said that it was a frequent occurrence on his vessel, when 
they had become tired of them, or had procured better fishes, to 
turn the remainder alive into the waters of Lake Erie. 
“Tn 1871 Mr. A. Booth, a large dealer of Chicago, had an eel 
of four pounds weight sent him from the south end of Lake 
Michigan, and a few weeks afterward a fisherman of Ahneepee, 
Wis., nearly 200 miles to the northward, wrote him that he had 
taken a few eels at that point. It was a matter of interest to 
account for their presence, and a long time afterward we learned 
that some parties at Eaton Rapids, Mich., on a tributary of the 
lake, had imported a number of eels and put them in the stream 
at that place, from which they had doubtless made their way to 
the points where they were taken. The unfortunate aquarium- 
car, in June, 1873, by means of the accident that occurred at Elk- 
horn River, released anumber of eels into that stream, and about 
four thousand were placed by the United States Commission in 
the Calumet River at South Chicago, Il.. two hundred in Dead 
River, Waukegan, I11., and three thousand eight hundred in Fox 
River, Wisconsin.’’* 
They have since been successfully introduced into California. 
GUNTHER ON THE LIFE-HABITS OF THE EEL. 
Concerning the life-history of the eel much has been written, 
and there have been many disputes even so late as 1880. In the 
article upon Ichthyology, contributed to the Encyclopedia Bri- 
tannica, Gunther writes: 
“There is no group of fishes concerning the classification and 
history of which there is so much doubt as the eel family ; an 
infinite number have been described, but most are so badly char- 
acterized, or founded on individual or so trivial characters, that 
the majority of the ichthyologists will reject them.’’{ 
In his Catalogue of the Fishes in the British Museum, Dr. 
Gunther has claimed to retain those as species which are distin- 
*Report U.S. Fish Commission, p. 2, 1874, 526. 
Gunther, Catalogue of Fishes British Museum, VIII., p. 24. 
