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APR 10 1517 
THE OTTAWA NATURALIST. 
VoL. XIX. OTTAWA, OCTOBER, igos. No. 7 
THE HAIR-EEL (GORDIUS AQUATICUS, ©. ): 
By Pror. Epwarp E. PRINCE, Dominion Commissioner of Fisheries, Ottawa. 
Most people are familiar with the story according to which 
horse-hairs soaked sufficiently long in a pond or stream will 
be transformed into eels.. I have seen a small book, published in 
Scotland 50 or 60 years.ago, by an intelligent Forfarshire gardener, 
which, to the apparent satisfaction of its author, proved the vulgar 
‘belief to be true. Like most vulgar fallacies, this belief has some 
apparent foundation to rest upon. The elastic, hard, thread-like 
body of the Hair-eel ( Gordius aquaticus ) so resembles a brown or 
black hair from the tail of a horse that the origin of the popular 
error iseasily explained. The further circumstance that ponds and 
other waters, in which hair-eels were never seen before, suddenly 
become peopled with these creatures, and that eels also appear 
unexpectedly in the most out-of-the-way localities, added strength 
to the theory, especially as the origin of the fish was a matter of 
dispute amongst naturalists. The sudden appearance of hair-eels 
was readily explained by the alleged transformation of horse-hairs ; 
and the presence of eels was no mystery if they were simply 
developed from horse-hairs. 
When a boy, I remember well discovering, to my surprise, 
specimens of Gordius aguaticus in the basin of a moss-grown 
spring by a Yorkshire (England) roadside. This clear, sparkling 
spring, as a rule, contained no visible signs of aquatic animals, 
and the appearance of the writhing, active hair-eel seemed difficult 
to understand, 
