Chap. 39.] 
riSHES. 
409 
CHAP. 38. (21.) — EELS. 
Eels live eight years ; they are able to survive out of water 
as much as six days/^ when a north-east wind blows ; but when 
the south wind prevails, not so many. In winter, they can- 
not live if they are in very shallow water, nor yet if the water 
is troubled. Hence it is that they are taken more especially 
about the rising of the Yergilise,^^ when the rivers are mostly 
in a turbid state. These animals seek their food at night ; 
they are the only fish the bodies of which, when dead, do not 
float upon the surface. 
(22.) There is a lake called Benacus,'''^ in the territory of 
Verona, in Italy, through which the river Mincius flows. At 
the part of it whence this river issues, once a year, and mostly 
in the month of October, the lake is troubled, evidently by the 
constellations'^^ of autumn, and, the eels are heaped together 
by the waves, and rolled on by them in such astonishing mul- 
titudes, that single masses of them, containing more than a 
thousand in number, are often taken in the chambers which 
are formed in the bed of the river for that purpose. 
CHAP. 39. (23.) THE MUB^NA. 
The mursena brings forth every month, while all the other 
adhere to the head of the polypus, and which it uses equally for the pur- 
pose of swimming or crawling. 
66 Spallanzani, in his " Nat. Hist, of the Eel in the Lagunes of Comac- 
chio," says, that immediately after their birth they retreat to the Lagunes, 
and at the end of five years re-enter the river Po, 
67 Eighty or a hundred hours at most, Spallanzani says. 
Cold, or a foul state of the water, Cuvier says, is very destructive to 
the eel. 
69 Or Pleiades, See c. 20. 
'^^ Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 75, says the same, and likewise that 
they feed mostly at night. The reason for their not floating wlien dead, he 
says, is their peculiar conformation ; the belly being so remarkably small 
that the water cannot find an entrance ; added to which they have no fat 
upon them. 
71 See B. iii. c. 23. ^2 gee B. iii. c. 20. 
73 The setting of the Pleiades or the rising of Arcturus. See B. ii. c. 47. 
Spallanzani informs us that the fishermen of the Lagunes of 
Comacchio form with reeds small chambers, by means of which they take 
the eels when endeavouring to re-enter the river Po ; in these such vast 
multitudes are collected, that they are absolutely to be seen above tliQ 
surface of the water. 
'5 Excipulis. 
