THE SILURUS GLANIS. 175 
great distance from its chosen retreat. If disturbed, 
it darts away, throwing up clouds of mud raised by 
the sweeping motions of its tail. When its place of 
retreat is known it may be easily caught by means of 
a hook baited with a lively fish, and sunk sufficiently 
deep ; the coarsest tackle may be used, and the fisher- 
men generally haul it up bodily, like a codfish. 
When once out of the water, the wels seems to be- 
come almost torpid; and I recollect especially one 
occasion when, requiring the head of a large example 
for examination, I was witness to the decapitation by 
one of the Berlin fisherwomen of a perfectly healthy 
wels of 40 or 50 lbs. weight, the fish, from the mo- 
ment it was placed on the block, making no further 
struggle than by a slight vibration of the muscles of 
the tail,—the headless body afterwards disgorging a 
fresh roach which had served as breakfast during the 
time the fish was in the tub. | 
Night-lines, spears, wicker-baskets, and nets, are 
generally used in its capture. As we might antici- 
pate from its habits, the wels principally preys on 
bottom-feeding fish : roach, red-eyes, carp, tench, eels ; 
but it will take any other moving creature, frogs and 
all sorts of diving birds being frequently found in its 
stomach. Salmonoids have little to fear, because 
they rarely inhabit the same locality with the wels, 
and even should that sometimes be the case, their 
habits of feeding are so different from those of the 
