442 
death, I sent it to the gentleman on whom I had bestowed its com- 
panion ; and what is very extraordinary— upon being put together 
again, it eat immediately, recovered its former briskness, and both 
of them are still alive. 
“On the 12th of June, 1 746, when I was viewing the floodgates 
belonging to the waterworks in Norwich, I beheld a great number 
of eels sliding up them and the posts adjacent, notwithstanding 
they all stood perpendicular to the horizon, and five or six feet 
above the surface of the pool below the waterworks. They 
ascended these posts and gates until they came into the dam above, 
and what makes the matter more strange, they slid up with the 
utmost facility and readiness, though many of the boards and posts 
were quite dry, and as smooth as a common plane had left them. 
I observed that at first they thrust their heads and about half their 
bodies out of the water, and held them up against the work for 
some time — I imagine until they found the glutinous matter which 
is constantly about their bodies become sufficiently thick or viscid 
by being exposed to the air to sustain their weight — then they 
would begin to ascend directly upwards with as much ease, seem- 
ingly, as if they had been sliding along level ground, and thus they 
continued to do until they had got into the dam above.” 
Mr. Arderon did not confine his observations to the habits of 
ruff and dace, but experimented upon perches, banstickles, miller’s 
thumbs, minnows, roach, &c., but he gave the preference to the ruff 
as being more easily tamed. The banstickle or stickleback he 
found to be the most pugnacious and unsociable, that it would 
not suffer any other fish to live in the jar with it, “ and so audacious 
as to attack whatever I put in, though ten times its own size.” 
He continues his observations on fish for nearly four years. In 
March, 1748, Mr. Baker read a letter from Arderon at a meeting 
of the R.S., in which he says, “I have, for the last three years 
past, been continually trying experiments on several kinds of fish, 
which I have kept in glass jars for that purpose, and at the hours 
of feeding them, as well as at other times, have, by different noises, 
such as whistling, halloing, the sounds of several musical instru- 
ments, and every other means I could contrive, endeavoured to dis- 
cover their sense of hearing — if they were indeed endowed with 
that sense— but could never perceive that they were affected by any 
of these noises. 
