ROMANCE OF THE ELL.

Western Star, 31 December 1923, Page 4

ROMANCE OF THE ELL.

SECRET OF THE SEA SOLVED

REMARKABLE DISCOVERV.,

For years geologists have been trying to discover where the eel’ npawus and where the'young, eels spend their earliest . infancy before reaching the streams and ponds in which they are usually found. .All. that could he said with certainty wad that tile breeding places were not in fresh water, hut somewhere in the ocean .deptm-. On© day last veal',, Dr Johannes. Schmidt, a. Danish professor, set out in a specially-equipped trawler, determined not to return 'until he had located the cel’s birthplace. By dredging the sea-bottom at frequent intervals , during the voyage, Dr Schmidt succeeded in tracing the eel to an area slightly north-east of the Bermudas. Here he found the eel’s eggs and with them millions of young eels —tiny, transparent, sole-shaped fish, with' needle-point teeth. Bronx bis investigations he pieced together one of the most amazing romances in Nature.

Almost as soon, as it is born the tiny British eel, scarcely thicker than a. bit- of paper, begins its'pilgrimage of 3000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean. The ; jouritey occupies two years, ami is carried out with the assistance of He Gulf Stream, which, in conjunction witli the eel’s wonderful’' instinct, guides it to the coasts of Europe.

When this stage of the journey is . reached the little eel stopo feeding, while one by one its’teeth loosen and fall out. Further, it gradually assumes a new shape, ilo. round ness becoming more pronounced as the weeks pass by. I Toward the beginning, of the second winter the young eel has grown up in the likeness of- its parent. Now begins the great trek up the rivers and streams. This part of the eel's history often involves a yummy of many mile-; overland, and the same wonderful instinct that guided the creature across the far-flung .sea prompts it to wriggle up hill and flown dale, until it reaches the waters where it will .spend the nest eeven or eight years. . At the end of this period the cel becomes restless. It discards its grey--green garb for a lively of shining silver, while its movements become almost electric. This change of habit and appearance; presages the returnj of the eel to its native deep. Setting j its course down-stream, it makes for j the sea, whence it noses its way with all haste to the breeding-ground it left years before. From thus, second great adventure of its life the c«el never returns. Havinjv found again the dim, weedy depths where it wee horn, away oil the east

coast of Central America, it brings into being the next generation of eels', and then dies. , !