TENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 10g 
seek out the deeper places of the sea, where they cannot be 
caught with our ordinary implements of capture. The eel eggs 
can only be found by a systematic investigation of certain parts 
of the sea bottom with the dredge and the microscope. This 
investigation might also include the sinking of the migrating 
eels in.special cases to the bottem of the sea, in order to deter- 
mine whether, under these circumstances, the eggs would ripen 
more rapidly. By using the largest fish for this purpose one 
could arrange, by means of small openings in the cages, to per- 
mit the entrance of the smal] male eels. At any rate, there is no 
doubt from these observations that the spawning period of the 
eel takes place in winter. 
In an article by Guido Lindenhain, entitled “The Natural 
History of the Eel” (Zur Naturgesehicte der Aale), which has 
recently been published in the Austro-Hungarian Fishery Gazette, 
extending through six numbers, a fanciful contributor of that 
paper, among other wonderful things, claims to have discovered 
the spawning of the eel in rivers and ponds. I will allow the 
very sagacious gentleman to recount his summer-night’s dream 
in his own words, in order to show with what certainty and pre- 
cision the most baseless fables concerning the natural history of 
the eel are even yet narrated: 
“The methods of spawning by the eel,” writes this keen obser- 
ver, are very interesting, but to observe them is very difficult ana 
tiresome, and, indeed, only possible when the spawning places 
have already been determined by experience. One must remain 
for many nights upon the shore, hidden behind the bushes, with 
unflagging attention, until these nocturnal adventurers have 
come into the shallow water and made their presence known by 
their snake-like motions at the surface. As soon as they have 
gathered together upon their chosen haunts there is a great com- 
motion in the water, and powerful blows are heard, so that the 
water splashes up a considerable distance, and the surface is 
covered with little waves, as if some great object was moving 
about, after which one gets glimpses of parts of the bodies of 
the contending rivals of the happy spawning fishes themselves. 
After the duration of an hour or so it is again quiet, and one 
sees that the water is moved in different directions in serpent- 
