528 Fishes. 



bled to add one or two fresh facts to the meager store I already pos- 

 sessed as to the habits of the eel. My acquaintance with this first 

 cousin of the serpent, as he is somewhat superstitiously accounted in 

 this part of the kingdom, commenced when I was a school-boy. I 

 was then very fond of what I should now vote a great bore : viz., the 

 laying of night-lines for eels. There was an excitement in being out 

 by the river's side after dusk, and a pleasure in the early morning-walk 

 for the purpose of taking up the lines (to say nothing of the gratifica- 

 tion arising from success) which completely overpowered in one feeling 

 of delight all that was disagreeable : and I still remember those expe- 

 ditions with pleasure, although by no means desirous to repeat them. 

 I then learned to think there must be an annual migration down- 

 wards, which at the least was facilitated by the autumnal floods. I 

 never caught very large eels in spring or early summer ; and never 

 missed them in autumn : — fine well-grown fellows as big as my arm. 

 Many of them weighed 3 and 3j lbs. I found, too, that if not actu- 

 ally inclined to astronomical pursuits in general, they paid great at- 

 tention to the state of the moon ; for I not only never caught them in 

 moonlight nights — except the river were flooded or just subsiding, in 

 which state of the water all fish are more easily taken, but the baits 

 were not even touched : and this in a dark night was a most unusual 

 circumstance ; for in common not a particle would be left, at such 

 times, out of ten or fifteen baits.* Their appetite, too, I found of a 

 most accommodating kind, for few things came amiss to them. Not 

 but that they had their tastes and preferences. Thus, a nice two-inch 

 piece of a tender young eel as big round as your little finger, seemed 

 to be as much relished by them as conger-soup by a Guernsey-man : 

 a young sparrow or mouse and " such small deer" were indisputably 

 their venison : while the head and shoulders of a moderate-sized roach 

 was a feast no eel of aldermanic proportions could by any means leave 

 untouched. A gudgeon was preferred to a minnow : a fresh sprat was 

 evidently a delicacy: no eel of acknowledged taste ever turned up his 

 nose at a fine earthworm, unless it happened to be somewhat ebony 

 of hue ; and if nothing better could be got, a meal of snails and frogs 



* The solution of this circumstance which will immediately occur to many, that 

 the eel in a light night can see the line, and is by that deterred from taking the bait, 

 is insufficient. The tackle used in fishing for eels is never fine, and for the most part 

 very coarse : but nevertheless the bait will be taken in broad daylight from the very 

 coarsest kind of tackle, though most frequently perhaps in such a way that the eel es- 

 capes the hook. Rendered suspicious by the strongly apparent line, it carefully es- 

 chews the snare, but by no means leaves the bait untouched. 



