138 FISHING GOSSIP. 
scientific manner, the periphery of an inverted cone. 
The muscles of his back and sides are obviously in a 
state of great excitement ; and to all appearance he 
seems endeavouring to bore a hole in the bottom of 
the lake, as if in pursuit of some invisible object. 
No animal eccentricity I ever witnessed puzzled me 
more than this spectacle of the eel when J saw it 
first. Bright on the “Federals’—Newdegate on 
“nunneries’—Spurgeon on “ dip-candles”—or Roe- 
buck de omnibus rebus et quibusdam altis, could: not 
surprise me half so much. At first I imagined—what 
will not puzzled philosophers imagine to tide over 
their difficulties ?—that the process I witnessed was 
in some way connected with the generative functions 
of the animal ; but the thought was no sooner con- 
ceived than abandoned, on observing that there was 
no partner near to assist in the offices of reproduction. 
No vagaries or curiosities of animal generation, 
“equivocal” or otherwise, that I read for a diploma 
(which was never of the least use to me after) would 
exactly meet the case in point. So, like the well- 
trained spaniel, I made a second cast, and this time 
concluded that the eel was making a comfortable 
morning meal on little molluscs, insects, and larve, 
that abound on the bottom of lakes ; and not under- 
going, like a parish pauper, the penal charity of a 
board of guardians, by making holes and stopping 
them up again. Our purpose, however, at present is to 
