246 TACKLE—CURIOUS METHODS—SILURUS—EELS 
Where fish, however, pay any regard whatever to their ova, 
it is usually, but not always, on the father that the duty falls. 
“Omnium ”’ in Pliny is to be read not with “ solus’”’ but with 
“edita ova.” This reading advances the quite different claim 
that the Silurus is the only male that includes in its watch and 
ward not merely its own but promiscuously also the eggs of 
other fish. Perhaps the same start of surprise awaits him, on the 
pentecostal and last day of his vigil, as that of the hen when 
she first beholds a mixed brood of chickens and ducklings 
emerging from under her breast. 
Pliny reveals some fabulous uses of the Silurus. In XXXII. 
28, fresh caught Suri are an excellent tonic for the voice. 
In 46, by the smoke and scent of a burnt Silurus, especially 
one hailing from Africa (!), the pangs of child-birth are said 
to be greatly eased. In 40, for curing ‘“‘ignes sacros ” or the 
malady of St. Anthony’s fire, the application of the bellies of 
living frogs, or of ashes from a Silurus, were two of the nostrums 
recommended. 
The fourth and last method, for the capture of Eels, given 
by lian,! although almost certainly cribbed from Oppian,? 
but with a local habitation and a name carefully thrown in to 
suggest originality, reads much as follows: 
The eeler from a high bank of the “‘ river Eretaenus, where 
the eels are the largest and by far the fattest of all eels,” lets 
down at a turn of the stream some cubits’ length of the intestines 
of a sheep. An eel, seizing a bit of it at the nether end, tries 
to drag the whole away, on which the fisher applies the other 
end (which is fixed to a long tubular reed serving the place of 
a fishing rod) to his mouth, and blows into the sheep’s gut. 
This presently swells; the fish receiving the air in his mouth 
swells too, and unable to extricate his teeth is lugged out, 
adhering to the inflated intestines.3 
“Gin these be joys of artful eeling, oh! gie me Essex 
1 XIV. 8. 
2 Hal., IV. 450 ff. 
3 ** Bobbing for eels,” with a bunch of worms on worsted is of like principle, 
but lacks the pneumatic touch. The eels seem to get their teeth caught in the 
worsted, and are pulled out before they can let go. See antea, p. 42, for the gar- 
fish of the Solomon Islands.being caught from a kite by a hookless spider’s 
web. 
