MXJB^NIDiE. 375 



each other, just in the same maimer that serpents per- 

 form the feat. From such evidence it would seem that 

 these fish are really ovoviviparous, producing eggs which 

 are hatched in their interior and come forth young eels. 

 Still when we consider, on one hand, the aU but ubiqui- 

 tous distribution of eels over the globe, and how rapidly 

 they multiply, and on the other, the millions of mankind 

 who have been notoriously familiar with them for two 

 thousand years, many of whom have made them their 

 study, and none of whom have ever succeeded in finding 

 a gravid specimen, it must be apparent that much mys- 

 tery still attaches to their genesis; in spite of which dif- 

 ficulty, as sure as spring* returns, myriads of tiny eels 

 in serried phalanx are seen, keeping close along the river 

 banks, making head against the strongest opposing cur- 

 rents, an army of pigmies, evidently only a few days old, 

 but without any obvious parentage. 



Though the ancients knew nothing of the birth of eels, 

 with most of their extra-uterine proceedings they seem 

 to have been well acquainted; Aristotle mentions that 

 they were avahpofjLoi, at one period, and KardSpo/jLot 

 at another; or in other words, that they run up rivers 

 in spring and down again in autumn ; and this is agree- 

 able to modem observation. The same author, too, 

 remarked on the extreme sensibility of eels to any 

 great and sudden change of temperature ; and, writing 

 for his own countrymen, warns them of the dsinger 



to the scraping of a fiddle; and a variety of otter of Nature's con- 

 juring tricks, whicli one could hardly believe on the testimony of 

 one's own, and certainly on that of no other person's sight ; we 

 may perhaps be permitted to hesitate in receiving the above affir- 

 mation as conclusive of the fact avouched. 



* The time when this occurs is not always spring, but occa- 

 sionally as late as midsummer. ' At the beginning of July,' as we 

 read in Williamson's ' British Angler,' 1740, ' a stream near Can- 

 terbury is to be seen covered with young eels all about the thick- 

 ness of a straw, and lying on the surface of the water.' 



