ROMANCE OF THE EEL

Evening Star, Issue 18137, 29 November 1922, Page 1

ROMANCE OF THE EEL

NATURE’S AMAZING- WAYS. A THREE-YEAR ODYSSEY. [From the ‘Manchester Guardian.'] Tho monthly journal ‘Discovery’ is a sort ot war correspondent of peace time, it fetches to us lawmen at homo the exciting news from tho various fronts where science is gauuug hard-fought ground. In its October number it brings us, by tho .writing hand of Mr G. T. Fanrau, a really ..il'Korbutg story of a triumphant attack—known, ot course, sorao little time ago to n. few readers of specialist periodicals, but absolute news to most of us, tho vulgar. Alnrino zoologists have solved) at last tho ancient riddle of tho life history of the common ocl. Dr Jobs. Schmidt, a Danish zoologist, lias now filled up the last of tho gaps in tho talc, and hero it is. The adult eels —a male eel is an adult at five or six years of age, and 1 a female at anything from live to twenty —from all tho rivers, lakes, and ponds ot Europe set out seawards in autumn and winter, resting by day .and travelling by night, especially on moonless nights. They probably go about ten miles a night. Reaching tho open sea, they never return. But we know what becomes of them now. Their placo of honeymoon and nursery is a Limited tract of tho North Antiantic, about 2,500 miles south-west of England and 600 miles northeast of tho Leeward Islands. There the larva) of tho eel are born in spring and early summer, apparently between 700 ft and I,oooft below tho surface. As they grow during that first Bummer they move up towards the surface. Next summer the one-year-old infants uro found in the centre of the Atlantic, some impulse urging them north-eastward towards Europe. Tho summer after that they arc off the coasts of Europe. For tho leu months following this third midsummer of their lives the lame, now developing into elvers, seem to take no food at all. It is a period of some strain, fur they have to make their way up the rivers, then up their tributaries, and so—many of them—into remote inland pools ; and at the same time they have to change their gear, as it were, fiom that of sea life to that of the fell water. However, tho stout creatures man’age somehow to live on their fat. By the following April they are smaller than they were, but they have arrived. To add an ‘extra marvel to this threcvear odyssey of the baby cel, ho comes from a breeding area, used also by a slightly different species, the American eel. The la'rvte of the two species are found together, and are sometimes taken in ths same not. Yet no American larva, bo far as it is known, makes for Eiu-ope, and no European larva for America. Dr Schmidt discovered) why by following both of larvae up. The American kind, he found, completes its larval stage in one wear —just long enough for it to reach th* American coast before its constitution begins to cry out for fresh water and freshwater tilings. So if it made for Europe it would, at tho end of the first year of the journey, be cast away in mid-Atlantic like a wrecked mariner, with water, water everywhere and) rot a drop te_ on the other hand, a larva with a European pedigree struck out for America, it would have to hang about off the American coast, like a quarantined ship, for two years until its organism was qualified to go up a river. Either would perish. One stands amazed and awed at the perfect certitude oi instinct which propels each kind of eel, unguided by any accompanying parent, along tho proper route of its own pilgrimage. But amazement grows deeper, if fiossible, in presence of the apparent enormity of Nature's exaction of effort both from tho emigrant parents and from the immigrant young. What, one wonders, con tho physical circumstances of the world have been which evolved for the sluggish-looking creature that wo see lying motionless ou the mud, under clear ice, <’o’>d' i t i^riK much more exorbitant than those imposed even upon migratory birds. Th n «<' "jm in earlv vouth have stooped i 1 1 1 -a. I I ght lines for — "’'li some compunction stony fortitude with which the id himself tightly rn.md the base ot the stout water lily spmt to resist tno toarmz haul of the lino. Th«y need resolution, these eels. Dr Schmidt is still cruising about the Atlantic to clear up a few odd details. Even without further perfecting a layman can well believe that Air Farran is right in eall'iig Dr Schmidt’s work “one of the most remarkable investigations in marine zoology ever undertaken.”