TENTH ANNUAL MEETING. Eb 
correction was also made by Von Siebold’s assistant, Dr. Paul,* 
and by S. Th. Cattie. 
It is well known, as Von Siebold remarks, that young eels, 
ascending the rivers, developed into females and that the males 
remain in the sea or at the mouths of rivers. This statement 
cannot be exactly demonstrated, since among 250 eels, from 11 
to 15 inches in length, taken in the vicinity of Cumlosen, I found 
13 males or 5 per cent. (Cumlosen is situated in the vicinity of 
Wittenberg, and is at least 120 miles from the mouth of the 
Elbe). How large the percentage of difference between the 
neighborhood of the mouth of Elbe and places situated farther 
up the stream, as regards the proportion of males and females, 
may be, I have hitherto, from want of material, been unable to 
decide. Forty from the Havel at Havelberg (about 20 miles 
above Cumlosen) were all females. Out of 137 eels taken in the 
bays at Rugen, in the Baltic, | found 61 or 44\6 per cent. males, 
while at Wismar, on the Danish coast, the males only constituted 
11 per cent. Whether these facts have any connection with the 
discovery of the hitherto unknown spawning places of the eels, 
it is hoped that further observations will determine. 
When Cattie, in his already cited work, gives it as a deter- 
mined fact that the eels wander into deep water here, in order 
to let their generative organs attain maturity, which happens in 
six or eight weeks, and that the old male and female eels, after 
the reproductive act, die, according to my knowledge, there are 
wanting observations which will give this a scientific founda- 
tion. What Von Siebold and Jacoby only state as probable 
appear to him (Cattie) to have become already established facts. 
As far as the distinction between male and female eels by 
external characters is concerned, the eels sent to me, some time 
in November, from the coast of Schleswig showed so great dif- 
ference in color that their sender, the fish-master Hinkleman, 
was able to decide without difficulty between males and females. 
The former were distinguished by a specially brown coloration, 
while the females, in addition to greater size, almost without 
exception exhibited a dull steel-gray color. Among the males 
* Austrian Fishery Gazette, 1880, No. 12, Pp. 90. 
