ORIGIN OF THE EEL.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17297, 8 November 1921, Page 8

ORIGIN OF THE EEL.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE PEESS." Sir, —I understand that one of the problems that the "Quest" is going to try and solve is the origin .of the eel. I do not claim to be an authority on 'this subject, but I firmly believe they are hatched out in swamps, although scientists hold that Nature has not provided the eel with organs of procreation. Last summer I was cleaning a ditch, and whilst spading down the bank, a little above the water-line, I cut into a cell or nest, about the size of a hazelnut, and in it were huddled together twelve to twenty little eels, under an inch in length, and a shade thicker than a strand of horsehair. When disturbed with a twig they were very much alive, and wriggled away to safety. I have often found single specimens from two inches upwards near the same spot, but this was the first nest, and the eels the smallest that ever I have found. Some believe that horsehair under certain circumstances turns into eels, and others that whitebait does, but my discovery explodes the latter theory, as a whitebait is big enough to swallow one of these. I remember reading in your columns some time ago that a writer said he watched an eel swimming in a weir, accompanied by a batch of young ones, and on the writer moving the parent opened its mouth and the young swam in, and whether it made a meal of them, or disgorged them when the danger was past, would be hard to Bay. It would be interesting to hear from any reader of the smallest eel ever found.—Yours, etc., EZRA TRELEAVEN. Lower Styx.