286 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



on a stream or pond being dried up in summer, when the eels will quit it and wind 

 through the wet grass in search of water." 



BARREN EELS. 



A writer in Land and Water gave an account in 1893 °f a quantity of eels found 

 in a pond with no outlet. The eels were all of large size and all barren; but he did 

 not say how he knew they were barren. Another writer in the same journal doubted 

 that all eels found in fresh water were barren. Mr. Thomas Southwell replied to him, 

 and I quote from his reply in part as follows : " Far be it from me to attempt to prove 

 a negative ; but this much I can say : No statement of a gravid eel having been 

 detected in a pond of fresh water has, so far as I can learn, hitherto borne investi- 

 gation. Many times I have been told by the eel catchers that they frequently met 

 with gravid eels, but the oft-renewed offer of a sovereign for one in such a condition 

 has hitherto been fruitless, and of the many examples from such localities which I 

 have dissected, not one has indicated an approach to breeding. The only eels showing 

 even a partial development of the ova which I have obtained were from a tidal water, 

 where they were on their way to the sea. I do not think Dr. Grassi attempted to 

 account for the continued presence of eels in apparently isolated ponds ; that was 

 beyond the scope of his inquiry ; but it seems likely that in such cases the reproductive 

 instinct is arrested ; but if eventually developed it would probably lead them to 

 attempt to escape, and the marvelous situations in which full-grown eels have been 

 found lead one to infer that they frequently do so. The ascending elvers, whose 

 instinct leads them to go on and on, irrespective of barriers, I can believe would pen- 

 etrate almost anywhere, and there are few ponds so isolated as to have no outlet or 

 overflow whatever; and their numbers are so immense that a very large proportion 

 might perish without being missed. I see no insuperable difficulty in their gaining 

 access even to localities which appear to be cut off from all access to river or stream." 



EELS AND POLLUTION. 



Interesting evidence was given in an English court when the Hematite Iron 

 and Steel Company was summoned, at the instance of the West Cumberland 

 Fishery Board, for allowing a certain substance to flow into the River Eheu and its 

 tributaries to such an extent as to kill trout and salmon. The evidence was conclusive 

 that the defendant company, for sanitary reasons, did let off the sediment from a pond 

 and the sediment did flow into the stream, and large quantities of trout and salmon 

 were destroyed. 



The water bailiff, one Sanderson, testified that eels from the polluted stream were 

 "found in hundreds making their way overland to holes and to any place they could 



