■ THK coMiiox ee;!.^ Aiiguiiia chrysypa rafiiiesque 



The common eel, though a most familiar fish, has been surrounded in the past with a 

 wealth of legend and fiction as regards its origin. Now that science has begun to find out 

 how- this fish really comes into the world, the story proves to be actually more woriderfu! 

 than any of the fables previously related (see pages 1141 and 1142). 



where it is one of the most esteemed of 

 food fish. The eel catch in all North 

 America is insignificant, by comparison 

 with that of Denmark, the smallest coast- 

 wise country of Europe. It is therefore 

 not strange that the eel should have re- 

 ceived special attention from the biol- 

 ogists and fishery authorities of Scandi- 

 navia and Germany, and that recent ex- 

 tension of knowledge of this fish should 

 have come largely from that source. 



Study of the eel is not of purely scien- 

 tific interest, but has a decidedly practical 

 bearing, for no intelligent consideration 

 of eel legislation and conservation is pos- 

 sible without a knowledge of the cardinal 

 points in the eel's life, especially its re- 

 produc^on, migration, and growth. 



SOMK KEL MYTHS 



. While the remarkable habits of the eel 

 remained unknown or defied the elucida- 

 tion of the early observers, imagination 

 ran riot, fiction and fable were accepted 

 as fact, and the eel was loaded with an 

 incubus of impossible attributes. 



The most extraordinary theories and 

 beliefs have been entertained regarding 

 the spawning habits of the eel, from the 



time of Aristotle to the present day. The 

 cause of all the speculations and miscon- 

 ceptions has been the fact that eels do 

 not spawn within the confines of the con- 

 tinents or where human observation is 

 possible. We may therefore sympathize 

 with the older writers, including Aris- 

 totle, Pliny, Athenseus, and Oppian, 

 among the ancients, and Rondelet and 

 Gessner, among the writers of the middle 

 ages, who make no account for the gen- 

 eration of eels in any other way than by 

 spontaneous origin from mud, slime, dew, 

 horsehair, skins of old eels, etc. 



One of the most noteworthy writers 

 of eel fiction was Albertus Magnus (1206- 

 1280), who was a student of Aristotle 

 and a teacher of Aquinas, and was the 

 most learned and widely read man of his 

 time. An edition of his works, puH'^hed 

 at Frankfort in 1545, contains the state- 

 ment that ''the eel comes out of the 

 water in the night-time into the fields, 

 where he can find pease, beans, or len- 

 tils." 



Sustained by this reputable authority, 

 the eel began to frequent the literary 

 fields of many subsequent writers, in 

 search of vegetable and other land prod- 



1141 



