TENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 103 
transfer of the responsibilities, the inspector of fisheries has ren- 
dered a very unthankful service to Professor Virchow; he was 
obliged to publish a notice in the papers in which he urgently 
stated that he wished to be excused from receiving any more 
packages, for he would hardly know what to do with them. 
The comic papers of Berlin now circulated the suggestion that 
hereafter the eel should be sent to the investigators only in a 
smoked state. This amusing episode is interesting in showing 
how remarkable an interest the whole world was beginning to 
take in the eel problem.”* 
UNDOUBTED NORMAL REPRODUCTIVE HABITS OF THE EEL.— 
BENECKE. 
It may be assumed with the greatest safety (writes Benecke) 
that the eel lays its eggs like most other fish, and that, like the 
lamprey, it only spawns once and then dies. All the eggs of a 
female eel show the same degree of maturity, while in the fish 
which spawn every year, besides the large eggs which are ready 
to be deposited at the next spawning period, there exist very 
many of much smaller size, which are destined to mature here- 
after, and to be deposited in other years. It is very hard to 
understand how young eels could find room in the body of their 
mother if they were retained until they had gained any consider- 
able size. The eel embryo can live and grow for a very long 
time supported by the little yolk, but when this is gone it can 
only obtain food outside of the body of its mother. The follow- 
ing circumstances lead us to believe that the spawning of the eel 
takes place only in the sea: (1) that the male eel is found only in 
the sea or brackish water, while female eels yearly undertake a 
pilgrimage from the inland waters to the sea, a circumstance 
which has been known since the time of Aristotle, and upon the 
knowledge of which the principal capture of eels by the use of 
fixed apparatus is dependent; (2) that the young eels with the 
greatest regularity ascend from the sea into the rivers and lakes. 
All statements in opposition to this theory are untenable, since 
the young eels never find their way into land-locked ponds in 
* Zoologischer Anseiger No, 26, p. 193; American Naturalist, vol. 13, p. 125, and Jacoby, p. 
44. 
