88 FISH CULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 
Jacoby has remarked that the eel was from the earliest timesa 
riddle to the Greeks; while ages ago it was known by them at 
what periods all other kinds of fishes laid their eggs, such dis- 
coveries were never made with reference to the eel, though thou- 
sands upon thousands were yearly applied to culinary uses. The 
Greek poets, following the usage of their day, which was to at- 
tribute to Jupiter all children whose paternity was doubtful, 
were accustomed to say that Jupiter was also progenitor of the 
eel, | 
‘‘When we bear in mind,” writes Jacoby, “the veneration in 
which Aristotle was held in ancient times, and still more through- 
out the Middle Ages—a period of nearly two thousand years—it 
could not be otherwise than that this wonderful statement should 
be believed and that it should be embellished by numerous ad- 
ditional legends and amplifications, many of which have held 
their own in the popular mind until the present day. There is 
no animal concerning whose origin and existence there is such 
a number of false beliefs and ridiculous fables. Some of these 
may be put aside as fabrications ; others were, probably, more 
or less true, but all the opinions concerning the propagation of 
the eel may be grouped together as errors into three classes: 
“(I.) The beliefs which, in accordance with the description of 
Aristotle, account for the origin of the eel not by their develop- 
ment from the mud of the earth, but from slimy masses which 
are found where the eels rub their bodies against each other. 
This opinion was advanced by Pliny, by Athenzeus, and by Op- 
pian, and in the sixteenth century was again advocated by 
Rondelet and reiterated by Conrad Gessner. 
“(I1.) Other authorities base their claims upon the occasional 
discovery of worm-like animals in the intestines of the eels, 
which they described, with more or less zealous belief, as the 
young eels, claiming that the eel should be considered as an an. 
imal which brought forth its young alive. although Aristotle in 
his day had pronounced this belief erroneous, and very rightly 
had stated that these objects were probably intestinal worms. 
Those who discovered them anew had no hesitation in pro- 
nouncing them young eels which were to be born alive. This 
opinion was first brought up in the Middle Ages in the writings 
