64 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE 



and their bodies covered with silvery scales. 

 The eyes are now known to reach an enormous 

 size when the eels reach very deep water. A glance 

 at the map of the sea surrounding the coasts of 

 Northern Europe will show what an extraordinary 

 interest has begun to attach to the life-history of 

 the eel that so f amiUarly takes the worm with which 

 the schoolboy baits his hook in every httle stream 

 and inland pond. There is, for instance, no depth 

 of two hundred fathoms in the North Sea or in the 

 English Channel or anywhere near our coasts. All 

 the eels that come down the rivers of the British 

 Islands and of North-Western Europe appear to 

 be making for a region farther out in the Atlantic. 

 A considerable distance west of the British Islands 

 young eels have been found in water of great depth, 

 and it is apparently from such a region that the 

 young eels return which ascend our rivers in spring. 

 Eels on their migration go down the rivers in the 

 autumn generally with floods. They are caught 

 for the markets in vast numbers at such times. 

 They generally move at night and they seem to 

 prefer stormy weather. As in the case of the migra- 

 tion of some birds the males precede the females 

 in this journey towards the depths of the ocean. 

 The usual stay of the eel in fresh water seems to be 

 about five or six years. We never see the mature 

 form, for the eel which we know develops into a 

 creature of very different appearance when it reaches 

 the rendezvous in the deep waters of the ocean where 

 it spawns, and to which it is drawn by these strange 

 forces of Ufe. 



It is curious how all this seems to fit in with much 

 that was formerly known. Seventy years ago a 



