Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

!:252 TACKLE—CURIOUS METHODS—57Lf7i?C7S—EELShabits with those of other insects." ^" The beetle in the actof parturition " is represented on the frontispiece !The fact that this beetle is evidently a dead one would not,as the Bihliotheca Piscatoria rather wickedly puts it, even ifknown to the writer, cause him to alter his opinion one jotIt was only in 1896—strange, indeed, that a problem whichso many keen intellects had attacked should remain unelucidatedfor over two thousand years !—that the mode of reproductionand development of the Eel was first surmised, and then for themost part ascertained by Professor Grassi and Dr. Galandruccio.But not till 1904 were most of the surmises of the Italianinvestigators placed beyond question, and the mode ofreproduction,etc.,established beyond doubt by Johann Schmidt ofCopenhagen.The now accepted view (stated shortly) is as followsfreshwater Eels approach maturity when about six years old,and then change their colour from browny-yellow to silver,whence " Silver Eels." In this bridal attire and with eyesenlarged, they find their way from the rivers to the sea, and farout into deep waters of the ocean. The pace at which theytravel on their way to the sea cannot be computed exactly, buttwo marked Eels have been caught whose record was nineteenkilometres in two days. Meek - states that neither the exactlocality nor the approximate depth of the spawning isas yetknown, but that there can be no doubt that the spawning regionlies deep and far out in the Atlantic beyond the Continentalshelf.The Times, Sept. 25, 1920, announces that Dr. J. Schmidthas just discovered the spawning place of fresh-water Eelsto be not far S. of Bermuda, or about 27 deg. N. and 60 deg. W.,much farther W. than he anticipated. Of the many marvelsof the ichthyic world this is, perhaps, the greatest. It taxes,ittranscends, our powers adequately to conceive the hereditaryinstinct or gauge the enduring strength which impels fish—as yet1 It is curious to find that a similar belief was held in Sardinia : accordingto Jacoby, the water beetle {JDytiscus roeselii) is there believed to be theprogenitor of the Eel, and is accordingly called the " Mother of the Eels"(Turrell, op. cii., p. 37).2 Migrations of Fishes, London, 1916.