THE FAMILY OF EELS. 
S21 
expended the large sum of a hundred shillings in a dish of 
Eels. Nor was this altogether a solitary instance, and as a 
further example of the interest felt in these delicacies, it 
appears by a charter granted by King Ethelred, in the year 
998, or rather by Bishop Wilson’s grant, that the monks of 
Salisbury were entitled to the tithes of Eels taken from the 
fishponds, together with the right of taking fish with a net 
in the vivaria or stews, for one day in the year. Also when 
Terracina, a sea-port of Italy, was besieged by the Turks, the 
inhabitants made a vow that they would give twenty thousand 
Eels to Saint Benedict yearly, if by his intercession they 
should be delivered from the danger to which they were 
exposed. A few days afterwards the Turks raised the siege; 
and in gratitude the Eels were carried every year to the 
Benedictine Monks until modern times. — (Misson’s Travels.) 
In the poem “Breton’s Ourania” we read — 
“The Silver Eel, 
Which millers taken in their ozicr weele, 
Dwell in the rivers as principall fish, 
And given to Pan to garnish thy dish.” 
At a later date also Tusser recommends, — 
“Put Eels in stew 
To leave till Lent, 
And then to bo spent.” 
But they were not thought altogether favourable to health; and 
in an ancient book of repute on the practise of physic, 
“Regimen Sanitatis SalerniiE,” it is said: — 
“Who knows not physic should be nice and choice 
In eating Eels, because they hurt the voice: 
Both Eels and cheese, without good store of wine 
Well drunk with them, offend at any time.” 
It may he supposed that the different kinds of Eels are 
caught indiscriminately, and we shall by and by take occasion 
to mention the difference of proportion which thus they may 
he supposed to bear to each other; but taken together it is 
estimated that little short of ten millions of these fish are 
brought yearly to Billingsgate, chiefly from Holland; so that 
when a tax was paid on the importation of them, it amounted 
in one year to almost a thousand pounds. 
VOL. IV. 2 T 
