THE EEL FAMILY. 443 



majority of the adult eels leave the streams and rivers and 

 migrate to the sea. Some of the eels, however, remain in fresh 

 vsrater during the winter. That this migration to the sea is for 

 the purpose of spawning seems to be proved by the fact that 

 about the end of spring and beginning of summer, immense 

 numbers of young eels enter the fresh water streams from the 

 sea. While most authorities are agreed that the eels spawn 

 only in salt water, some are of the opinion that they also spawn 

 in fresh water. Roosevelt maintained that eels were hatched 

 in fresh water in his trout-ponds in Great South Bay, Long 

 Island. Sawyer also considered that eels do not all return 

 to salt water to spawn, but spawn wherever they find suitable 

 places in ponds and rivers. In this connection Benecke says 

 that ' eels planted in land-locked ponds increase in size, but 

 never increase in numbers. In lakes which formerly contained 

 eels, but which by the erection of impassable weirs, have been 

 cut off from the sea, the supply has diminished, and after a 

 time only scattered individuals, old and of great size, are taken 

 in them. If an instance of the reproduction of the eel in fresh 

 water could be found, occurrences such as these would be 

 inexplicable.' At the meeting of the Scottish Microscopical 

 Society on the 16th of February, 1894, Mr George Sandeman 

 called attention to some remarkable eels from a warm and 

 stagnant loch on the Isle of May, which has no communication 

 with the sea. He remarked that it was not known how long 

 ago the eels were placed in the loch, but it did not appear to 

 have been within the memory of man. They are not known to 

 breed, their ovaries and testes being somewhat atrophied, 

 though still apparently functional. In the specimens examined 

 (at St Andrews Laboratory), atrophy is also marked in the 

 muscles, liver and spleen. The ovaries and ova are very small, 

 fatty, and the nuclei of the ova obscured. In appearance these 

 eels are singularly bony. The specimens were all about 26 

 inches long, but weighed only one-half the normal weight. 

 Perhaps the most interesting feature about them was their 

 eyes, which in some examples were eight times larger than 

 normal. The cornea is opaque, and attacked with gregarines 

 and other organisms. These very remarkable abnormalities 



