TENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 89 
of Albertus Magnus, and in the following centuries by the zodl- 
ogists Leuwenhoek, Elsner, Redi, and Fahlberg ; even Linnzeus 
assented to this belief and stated that the eel was viviparous. It 
is but natural that unskilled observers, when they open an eel 
and find inside of it a greater or smaller number of living crea- 
tures with elongated bodies, should be satisfied, without further 
observation, that these are the young of the eel; it may be dis- 
tinctly stated, however, that in all cases where eels of this sort 
have been scientifically investigated, they have been found to be 
intestinal worms.* 
“(III.) The last group of errors includes the various supposi- 
tions that eels are born not from eels, but from other fishes, and 
even from animals which do not belong at all to the class of 
fishes. Absurd as this supposition, which, in fact, was contra- 
dicted by Aristotle, may seem, it is found at the present day 
among the eel-catchers in many parts of the world. 
“On the coast of Germany a fish related to the cod, Zoarces 
viviparus, which brings its young living into the world, owes to 
this circumstance its name A4Al/muter, or eel mother, and similar 
names are found on the coast of Scandinavia.” 
“Tn the lagoon of Comacchio,” continues Jacoby, “I have again 
convinced myself of the ineradicable belief among the fishermen 
that the eel is born of other fishes; they point to special differ- 
ences in color, and especially in the common mullet, Mugz/ 
cephalus, as the causes of variations in color and form among eels. 
It is a very ancient belief, widely prevalent to the present day, 
that eels pair with water snakes. In Sardinia the fishermen cling 
to the belief that a certain beetle, the so-called water-beetle, 
Dytiscus Roeselii, is the progenitor of eels, and they therefore call 
‘this mother of eels.’”’ 
SEARCH FOR AND DISCOVERY OF THE FEMALE EEL 
A scientific investigation into the generation of eels could only 
*It is very strange that an observer, so careful as Dr. Jacoby, should denounce in this con- 
nection the well-known error of Dr. Eberhard, of Rostock, who mistook a species of zoarces 
for an eel, and described the young, which he found alive within the body of its mother, as 
the embryo of the eel. In Jacoby’s essay, p. 24, he states that the animal described by Eber- 
hard was simply an intestinal worm, an error which will be manifest to all who will take the 
pains to examine the figure. ; 
