FisheH. 323 



pond contained only very small fish was confirmed, if I recollect right, by brother an- 

 glers, who also informed me that another pond in the neighbourhood was similarly 

 stocked, and that those pigmy tench, though they never increased in bulk in their na- 

 tive waters, yet did so if removed to another pond. — Arthur Hussei/ ; Rottingdeane, 

 Sussex, August 7, 1843. 



Note on the Voracity of the Eel. A correspondent of ' The Zoologist ' relates an 

 instance he witnessed of the voracity of the eel (Zool. 108), which is somewhat similar 

 to an occurrence I beheld many years ago. On a visit to the well-known Sussex ruin, 

 Bodiam castle, one of my brothers and myself, looking rather suddenly out of a large 

 window upon the moat, disturbed a water-hen, which dived instantly, when it was 

 seized by an eel, and never rose again. The water not being perfectly clear, I could 

 not distinctly observe the struggle, but it appeared as if the fish wound itself round 

 the bird, so as to confine its energies, somewhat in the manner of the boa constrictor. 

 The eel must have been large, as the water-hen was an old one. Most deep-water 

 anglers, when fishing for something else, must have been tormented by catching an 

 eel, which usually swallows the hook very deep, and by writhing and twisting ties the 

 line into knots, and very probably breaks it. Under such circumstances I learned to 

 save my tackle by immediately pressing one foot hard upon the fish, while with a knife 

 1 divided the spine close to the head, which completely kills the eel, though all motion 

 does not instantly cease. A little salt put into the eel's mouth also causes immediate 

 death. — Id. 



Notes on the capture of large Fishes on the Trent, near Melbourne, Derbyshire. At 

 the northern extremity of Donnington park is a beautifully wooded eminence, over- 

 hanging the bosom of the Trent, called Donnington cliff, immediately below which 

 stands a building of rather ornamental character, now used as a paper-mill, but which 

 is somewhat celebrated as having been a strongly fortified place of the royalists during 

 the civil wars. The dam and weir belonging to the mill are the resort of fishes of al- 

 most every description. Eels, perch and pike are frequently taken here, and salmon 

 may be oftentimes seen leaping and sporting up the weir. Amongst five of the latter 

 caught there on the night of the 23rd of July, 1842, was a remarkably fine one, weigh- 

 ing upwards of 25 lbs., being, we believe, the finest one taken near the spot. King's 

 mills has long been a favourite locality with the sturgeon {Acipenser Sturio), and se- 

 veral individuals of formidable size have occasionally been captured in its vicinity, 

 from the time of King John to the present. In the ' Annals of Burton Monastery,' a 

 curious old record of monkish and ecclesiastical life, is the following quaint memo- 

 randum. " 1225. In this same yeare, in the waters of ye Trent near Donnington 

 Castle, about ye time of ye Assension of our Lord, there was taken a fish called a 

 Sturgeon, the old people of those parts then affirming that a similar fish was taken in 

 the same place the very yeare before King John was crowned." Stebbing Shaw, the 

 historian of Staffordshire, asserts that one was caught at King's mills in 1791, seven 

 feet long ; and in the year 1838, another was taken in the nets there of very consider- 

 able magnitude, but its exact dimensions we have never been able to ascertain, but 

 we have heard its length stated to be upwards of 8 feet. — /. J. Briggs ; Melbourne, 

 Derbyshire, September, 1843. 



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