F

CURIOSITIES OF ANGLING LITERATURE.

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THE EEL.

(Continued from page 225, Vol. II.)

NEW things can tend more to demonstrate the amphibious nature of the eel than an examination of its eye. "There is a transparent horny covering," says Sir Everard Home, "at some distance before the organ, to defend it from external accidents. This covering to an eye fitted to see in air, would entirely take off the effects arising from change of figure in the cornea; but in water where no such change could be attended with_advantage, such a covering is employed as an external defence." In a word, nature has provided the eel with a pair of spectacles to enable him to pursue his wanderings on land, as well as to force his way through the world of chinks and crannies, and stony obstructions that underlie both river and ocean.

If we acted up faithfully to the heading of these articles, we should cull only those facts and incidents of a rare character, which are known but to a few, or to be found in works of an almost obsolete or rare character. It would be easy, indeed, to give the reader many chapters regarding the eel, as well as other fish, were we permitted to pick from this dish and from that, which have been already served up to the public. But as books of a modern date are in the reach of most of our readers, any attempt to hash up our eels a second time from such sources would it may be presumed be far from acceptable to the palate of those who may honour us by a perusal of these jottings. The cruel practice of skinning eels alive although still a modern one, cannot be so lightly passed over. The agony they suffer must be exquisite in the extreme. There cannot exist any excuse for this infliction of suffering. A dead eel, provided it be fresh, is as good for edible purposes as a live one. Every cook I have spoken to upon the subject confirms this fact,— and amongst them I may name Francatelli, Soyer, Shelley of Bath, Gunter, &c. The reason of eels being kept alive, is to affirm their freshness to the buyer. So soon as they are required for the cuisine they may be mercifully despatched, either by a blow from a inallet upon the tail, or by the separation of the spine at the back of the head. In this respect-its capacity of feeling pain-the eel differs from most fish, and being adapted to live out of water, as well as in it, suffers in all probability from injury as much as an air-breathing animal. Not so fish in general; they are doubtless stiffled and suffocated, some immediately as in the case of the herring, and others after a while as in that of the carp. But whatever the intensity of the sufferings of eels may be while being flayed alive, there appears certainly to exist amongst the vulgar a notion that they

ought by this time to be "used to it," and Dr. Johnson tells us that he once heard a fisherman who was skinning an eel, curse it because it would not lie still.

There is another common fallacy regarding the eel which ought to be cleared up, and that is, the stigma placed against his character as a lover of foul water. Now, nothing is more fallacious than this accusation. True he is fond of mud as a warm winter clothing at a time when he is nearly or quite unconscious from cold and torpidity, but he is never better satisfied upon his return to vigour, than to find himself in clear and limpid streams; the best proof of which is, that he fattens quicker, becomes more lively, and is stronger withal, in those rivers which boast the greatest immunity from pollution and disturbance from floods. The New River, and the Wiltshire Avon, for instance, the one protected by the most careful watchfulness from the admixture of organic matter, and the other most exquisitely pure,—are both famed for their eels. Indeed eels when not torpid will die in muddy water-it suffocates them, and during high tides in the Thames, when the sewage of the metropolis has been washed above its customary limit, the eels are the first fish to turn up; the barbel being the next. It is a question, whether the eel even at the period when naturally seeking to lie dormant in the mud, would be induced to do so in some descriptions of deposit, for even in mud there is a clean and wholesome description, and a filthy and unwholesome one, as there is clean and "dirty" dirt.

But to return to the literary part of the curiosities of the eel. As we do not find that the following facts have been quoted beyond the works referred to, they may be noticed here with propriety:

What some say of horsehair, that though lifeless, yet lying nine days under water, they turn to snakes, may pertinently be applied to superstitious ceremonies.-Ivinnoch "Christian Man's Calling."

Edward Peacock, in Notes and Queries, in reply to the above says, "It is probable that when this correspondent transcribed the above, she was under the impression she was recording a superstition long since passed away, or if it remained anywhere, only lingering among those of the entirely ignorant, who believe every wonderful story that is told them. It will amuse your readers to be informed or reminded, that the late poet laureate, W. Wordsworth, and his predecessor, Robert Southey, neither of them men who were easily to be imposed upon, gave credence to this strange metamorphosis :

'You must have heard,' says the latter to his brother, Doctor Southey, 'the vulgar notion that a horsehair, plucked out by the root and put in water becomes alive in few days. The boys at Brathay repeatedly told their mother it was true; that they had tried it themselves and seen it tried. Her reply was show it me and I will believe it. While we were there last week in came Owen with two or three creatures in a bottle. Wordsworth was there; and to our utter and unutterable astonishment did the boys, to convince us that these long thin black worms were their own manufacture, by the old receipt, lay hold of them by the middle while they writhed like eels, and stripping them with their nails down on each side actually lay bare the horsehair in the middle, which seemed to serve as the backbone of the creature or the substratum of the living matter which had collected round it.

Wordsworth and I should both have supposed that it was a collection of animalculæ round the hair (which, however, would only be changing the nature of the wonder), if we could have in any way accounted for the motion upon this theory; but the motion was that of a snake. We could perceive no head; but

something very like the root of the hair, and for want of glasses could distinguish no parts. The creature, or whatever else you may be pleased to call it, is black or dark brown, and about the girth of a fiddle-string. As soon as you have read this, draw upon your horse's-tail and mane for half-a-dozen hairs; be sure they have roots to them; bottle them separately in water, and when they are alive and kicking, call in Gooch and make the fact known to the philosophic world. Never in my life was I so astonished as at seeing what in the act of seeing, I could scarcely believe and now almost doubt. If you verify the experiment, as Owen and all his brethren will swear must be the case, you will be able to throw some light upon the origin of your friend the tape-worm and his diabolical family.'

When I first read this I tried the experiment, but the result was of course in all respects the reverse of what the letter writer records. I cannot help thinking that the poets were the victims of a practical joke. It is possible that the supposed transformation of horsehair into slender eels, must have arisen from noticing what may often be found in wet ditches and stagnant pools. A keen observer may discover what appears to be long horsehairs; they are, however, a species of annelides, distinguished as the Gordius aquaticus, almost as fine as a hair, and brown, with the ends rather black. I have taken them out of the water and examined them under a glass, and they then resemble an earth worm. They exhibit considerable vivacity out of the water, and have all the appearance of horsehairs with the wriggling motion of eels."

Small eels have been termed "grigs from time immemorial. Charles Dickens in the last Christmas number of All the Year Round, makes use of the old saying "as merry as grigs," and asks in a parenthesis, why? Surely he need not have made this enquiry with a book of reference within reach. Grig, signifies a little duck, kricke, in Bavarian, and everybody knows how merry and nimble are little ducks. The word moreover signified anything below the natural size, " a small eel for instance," and Doctor Johnson gives it likewise as a 66 merry creature."

"Hard is her heart as flint or stone,

She laughs to see me pale ;

And merry as a grig is grown

And brisk as bottle-ale."

But if we are to accept the theory in full, that highlands and lowlands cause either high spirits or low spirits in the temperament of their inhabitants, grigs must surely participate in the changes of altitude and their sensitive natures equally correspond to the respective localities. To find a melancholy grig in a mountain lake, would therefore be as unnatural as to see one wriggling with laughter in a fen. Touching the fens, we may here remark that Anderon, a native of Norwich, was the first who observed the power and inclination of the eel to climb up piles, brickwork, &c., above the level of the water. "I have seen," says he, making the same attempt to climb into an artificial lake in a park close by the place where I now write. They were unsuccessful in their endeavours to gain the top of the sluice, which was at least 6 feet from the level of the water; but they tried it again and again, and several times proceeded more than half-way."

"eels

"The Angler-Naturalist," in its remarkably compendious account of the eel, states, that "in Somersetshire the country people assert

that they can trace the burying places of eels by the hoar frost not lying over such spots; and it is said, that following up this clue they dig them up in heaps."

The following from Southey's "Common Place Book" may serve to show how facts are distorted, and the seeds of superstition sown in uncultivated soils :

"Christmas, 1815. The post-boy has brought this shocking news,' as Mr. Lloyd's man calls it, from Kendal to Ambleside that there was a poor man there who had eels in him, and never any poor creature was known to bide so much as he did with these eels. They made a hole in his side to see if ther could get the eels, but it was found that they could not be got out without killing him; and at last he was in such pain that the doctors sleeped him to death. The interpretation of this Mr. Scrambler supposes to be, that the man had an aneurism of the aorta, the visible pulsation was supposed to be the motion of eels, and he died in the usual course of the disease soon after some dose had been given to him to allay the symptoms. Cupping or leeching may explain the other exaggeration."

RED. GILL.

THE SECRETS OF ANGLING.

Whilst we are on the subject of the Curiosities of Angling Literature, it cannot but be of interest to the lovers of the gentle sport to possess the entire poem from which father Izaak culled his well-known and beautiful lines, commencing—

"Let me live harmlessly and near the brink,"

and which we are now enabled to offer them through the result of a successful foray amongst the worm-eaten, musty old records of Angling Libraries, by our contributor "Red Gill." The alterations and emendations made by Walton (it is to be presumed) in the original text are also shown, and are not a little interesting and curious:

(It is here that Walton commences his quotation, the original text is given in full, and the passages altered in italics).