Various modes of capturing Eels are adopted by man. Bobbing, or clodding as it is sometimes called, is a very common and successful method, consisting in bunching a number of earthworms upon a worsted string, and lowering it near the place where the fishes are supposed to be feeding. So eagerly do the voracious fish seize the bait, and so fiercely do they bite, that they are pulled out of the water before they have time to collect their thoughts and disengage their teeth from the string. Night-lines, which are laid in the evening and taken up in the morning, are another plan. But the most successful method is by spearing. The spear used for the purpose is not unlike the conventional trident of Neptune, except that the prongs are four in number, flattened, slightly barbed on each edge, and spread rather widely from their junction with the shaft. This is pushed at random into the muddy banks where the Eels love to lie, and when one is caught, its long snake-like body is wedged in between the jagged prongs and lifted into the boat before it is able to extricate itself. Almost any kind of food that it can master, whether aquatic or terrestrial, is eaten to satisfy the creature’s most voracious appetite. Even mice and rats fall victims to its hunger, and an Eel is recorded to have been found floating dead on the water, having been choked to death by a rat which it had essayed to swallow, but which proved too large a morsel for its throat. So remarkable is the tenacity of life which this fish possesses, that after the creature has been cut up into lengths, each separate piece will move as if alive, and at the touch of a pin’s point will curve itself as though it felt the injury. When all irritability has ceased, the portions will flounce vigorously about if placed in boiling water, and even after its influence has ceased will, upon the addition of salt, jump about as vigorously as before. There can be no real sensation, let it be understood, as the spinal cord has been severed and all connection with the brain, which is the seat of sensation, has been cut off. How the Eel reproduces its kind has long been a subject of discussion. Some held that the young is produced in a living condition, and others that it is hatched from the egg. The matter has, however, been set at rest by the microscope, which shows that the oily-looking substance, generally called fat, which is found in the abdomen of the Eel, is really an aggregation of eggs, and that these objects, minute as they are, and which are not so large as the point of a pin, are quite as perfect in their structure as the eggs of a moth or a bird are seen to be to the naked, unaided vision.