373 PEOSE HALIEUTICS. 



' the Kennet swift ' has long been ' for silvery eels re- 

 nowned ;' whilst the Isle of Eels (Ely * whence the lords 

 of the manor formerly sucked out no small advantage), 

 Elmore on the Severn, and BUesmere on the Mersey, all 

 derive their names from the number and excellence of 

 the eels found in their waters. They are very fine near 

 Cambridge too, and there occasionally even rival those 

 of Narbonne in size. YarreU mentions two taken from 

 a dyke which weighed fifty-six pounds. Finally, Lin- 

 colnshire, the Boeotia of England, is highly favoured in its 

 eels according to the testimony of the ancient distich : — 



Ankham eel and Witham pike, 

 In all England is none like. 



Touching the birth of eels, much has been conjectured 

 and little positively ascertained : their origin, like that of 

 evil, is a vexed question stiU ; whether they come from 

 eggs, or wriggle into existence little eels, few have been 

 able quite to satisfy themselves. Several theories on the 

 subject were early broached.. Oppian supposes an em- 

 brace of the sexes actually to take place ; after which a 

 strigmentum, or gluey exudation from the surface of the 

 body detaches itself and falls to the bottom, where it is 

 vitalized; not by the co-operation of any apocryphal 

 mud-nymph — some 



Tonng Xutetia, softer than the down, 

 Nigrina black, or Merdamante brown ; 



but by an iatra-uterine action of the mud itself ! for 

 what, asks Oppian, is so engendering as mud ? Aristotle 

 calls eels ' the solitary race that have neither seed nor 



* ' When the priests of this part of the country would still re- 

 tain their wiyes in spite of whatever the Pope and the monks could 

 do to the contrary, their wives and children were miraculously 

 turned into eels (surely the great into congers, and the less into 



grigs !), whence it had the name of Ely. I consider it a lie.' 



Puller's 'Worthies of Cambridgeshire.' 



