TILL SCHMIDT'S IN 1904 253 
sexually undeveloped—of only moderate size to traverse 3000 
or 4000 miles of an ocean full of foes, and to seek, especially 
to find, the only area which contains the requisite depth, 
temperature, and currents favouring the procreation and the 
return home of their minute but parentless progeny. 
The conclusion is now clear that the Eels of Europe at any 
rate have a spawning area in common ; the two Italian doctors 
were wrong in supposing that Eels spawned in the Mediterranean. 
In such ocean depths certainly below, probably far below, the 
one hundred fathoms! line the generative organs of the Eels 
develope, and in due though protracted time the females 
spawn.2 
Their eggs float for a time; the young, when hatched out, 
pass through a metamorphosis and are known in one stage 
as Leptocephalus brevirostris. This larval form, which is flat 
and transparent and hasa very small head, drifts with the ocean 
currents towards the coasts of Europe, where it passes through a 
series of metamorphoses into the Elver or young Eel, which in 
March and April swims up English rivers. The fecundity of 
the Eel, were it not for the system of check and countercheck 
devised by Nature, would in time become a danger; for the 
ovary of a female thirty-two inches in length has been estimated 
to contain no fewer than 10,700,000 eggs ! 3 
But however legitimate or illegitimate their methods may 
seem, all praise should be rendered to our ancient anglers. 
Especially so, when we call to mind that, as they possessed 
not running lines, reels, gut, nor probably Janding nets, the 
playing of large fish must have required more delicate manipula- 
tion and the landing presented far greater difficulties than to us, 
armed as we are with all these and many other appliances. 
1 J. Schmidt found the youngest known stages of Leptocephalus, the larval 
stage of eels, to the west of the Azores, where the water is over 2000 fathoms 
deep: a were one-third of an inch in length and so were probably not long 
hatched. 
2 It is believed that no Eels return to the rivers, and that they die not long 
after procreation. “‘ They commence the long journey, which ends in maturity, 
reproduction, and death.’ Pvesidential Addvess, British Association, 
Cardiff, 1920. 
3 There is in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington an excellent 
collection of specimens, illustrative of the development of the Eel. 
