THE COMMON EEL

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 142, 13 December 1923, Page 20

THE COMMON EEL

ROMANCE OF A GREAT LOVER

RESULT OF PROFESSOR SCHMIDT'S RESEARCHES.

"Th« man who discovered Nature's greatest love story" is the description by a brother scientist of Professor Schmidt, the illustrious Dane who came to England for the meeting of the British Association, writes "A Man of Science" in the "Daily Chronicle," The story of Dr. Schmidt's work is as romantic as the work itself, for almost single-handed this devoted man of science solved one of the darkest riddles of the whole animal kingdom; the life-story of the common eel. When the work began all that- was known was that eels appear each year as tiny "elvers" off the mouths of our rivers and pass up-stream to the various | pools, to return to the sea at a later i period of their existence. Where these ' elvers came from, and where the fullgrown eels went to, were impenetrable mysteries. Dr. Schmidt began his great detective work by attempting to trace the little "elvers' back to their "nursery." His first discovery was made when he found that he was in reality tracing a frog back to a tadpole. In other words, th« eel is not born an eel. Its first appearance in the sea is made as a tiny flat fish. like a minute leaf. It becomes an. eel only when the shallow waters around , the river mouths are approached. The search, therefore, changed from an eelKunt to a hunt for the little flat fish— the "tadpoles," so to speak—which are destined to become eels in the future. It proved to be one of the longest searches ever made. For Dr. Schmidt had to cross the Atlantic before he found

the clue he was looking for. Patience, however, was rewarded at last, and the eel "nursery" located off the coast of the Bermudas, in water of very great depth. It is from this place, as was soon proved, that all the eel "tadpoles" come in the first instance. These frail creatures are bound for all manner of strange destinations. Some will go north to the coast of America, others must cross the Atlantic and enter the Baltic, the North Sea, the Mediterranean. Some will not complete their journey till the coasts of the Black Sea itself are in sight. Dr. Schmidt asked himself how it came.about that these "tadpoles" knew their destinations. Then he found that the American eels "tadpole" becomes an eel in just half the time required to make an eel of Ine European eel "tadpole." That means that if the American 'tadpoles" tried to go to Europe they would all turn into eels in the middle of the Atlantic. Such a change in suoh a place would be fatal. For the "tadpole ' form is the ocean-going form. So the American tadpoles go to America, and the European to Europe, though | they come out of the same cradle. These i tiny fish take two years to cross the Atlantic. They . spend several years aa eels in the pools of our rivers and streams. At that time they have a yellow, dirty appearance. But one day a strange transformation occurs. The yellow coat is east off. The eel becomes clothed in gleaming silver. On that day thd peace of the river is forsaken for ever. The lover seta forth on his mighty voyage as though every instant of tuna wa» vital to him. He rushesdown stream to the sea. And then, once more, but this time very swiftly, , be crosses the broad Atlantic to the mating ground where the tiny eels, his children, will one day be born. He does not return. In those unsearchable depths the eel loves and dies.