_The Times_, Sept. 25, 1920, announces that Dr. J. Schmidt has just discovered the spawning place of fresh-water Eels to be not far S. of Bermuda, or about 27 deg. N. and 60 deg. W., much farther W. than he anticipated. Of the many marvels of the ichthyic world this is, perhaps, the greatest. It taxes, it transcends, our powers adequately to conceive the hereditary instinct or gauge the enduring strength which impels fish—as yet sexually undeveloped—of only moderate size to traverse 3000 or 4000 miles of an ocean full of foes, and to seek, especially to find, the only area which contains the requisite depth, temperature, and currents favouring the procreation and the return home of their minute but parentless progeny. The conclusion is now clear that the Eels of Europe at any rate have a spawning area in common; the two Italian doctors were wrong in supposing that Eels spawned in the Mediterranean. In such ocean depths certainly below, probably far below, the one hundred fathoms[621] line the generative organs of the Eels develope, and in due though protracted time the females spawn.[622] Their eggs float for a time; the young, when hatched out, pass through a metamorphosis and are known in one stage as _Leptocephalus brevirostris_. This larval form, which is flat and transparent and has a very small head, drifts with the ocean currents towards the coasts of Europe, where it passes through a series of metamorphoses into the Elver or young Eel, which in March and April swims up English rivers. The fecundity of the Eel, were it not for the system of check and countercheck devised by Nature, would in time become a danger; for the ovary of a female thirty-two inches in length has been estimated to contain no fewer than 10,700,000 eggs![623] But however legitimate or illegitimate their methods may seem, all praise should be rendered to our ancient anglers. Especially so, when we call to mind that, as they possessed not running lines, reels, gut, nor probably _landing_ nets, the playing of large fish must have required more delicate manipulation and the landing presented far greater difficulties than to us, armed as we are with all these and many other appliances. FOOTNOTES: [559] _Trans._, by Diaper and Jones (London, 1722—see _supra_, p. 177), which I usually employ. Cf. III. 84: μυρία δ’ αἰόλα τοῖα δολορραφέων λίνα κόλπων. Fishing nets from Pompeii, even now almost entire, are to be found in Italian Museums. The best times for hauling up the nets were (according to Arist., _N. H._, VIII. 19) “just about sunrise and sunset. Fishermen speak of these as ‘nick-of-time’ (ὡραῖοι) hauls. The fact is that at these times fishes are particularly weak-sighted” (D’Arcy Thompson, _Trs._). Pliny, IX. 23, practically copies Aristotle. [560] Alciphr., _Epist._, 1. 17.