164 THE HAUNTS OF LIFE 
travel only in sunlight, and a passing cloud 
will cause them all to disappear like a flash, 
but when the sun shines out again they swim 
steadily on their way. 
It used to be the custom in some places to 
catch these little creatures in baskets, to use 
them for bait, or even to fry them in cakes. 
But in other places it is realised that this is a 
short-sighted policy, since the full-grown eels 
are much more valuable as food. Instead, 
therefore, of trapping the elvers, people some- 
times hang ropes of straw over the rocky 
places to help them on their way up the river. 
From the rivers the elvers push on into the 
smaller streams and people the ponds and 
lakes connected with them. If the water or 
the food-supply in one pond gets low, they 
have no difficulty in finding another, for, un- 
like most fishes, they are able to live for a 
considerable time out of water, and they have 
a way of wriggling themselves through damp 
grass for quite considerable distances. One 
naturalist tells us that he kept two small eels 
for a time in an aquarium, and “they passed 
most of the day buried in the sand at the bot- 
tom, but night after night they made their 
escape and were always found in the morning 
