The eel has many enemies, among others the common heron, who, in spite of the slippery skin of his victim, knows how to drive his denticulated middle claw into his body, or to strike him with his pointed bill. Yarrell relates that a heron had once struck his sharp beak through the head of an eel, piercing both eyes, and that the eel—no doubt remembering that one good turn deserves another—had coiled itself so tightly round the neck of the heron as to stop the bird's respiration: both were dead.
The London market is principally supplied with eels from Holland, a country where they abound. According to Mr. Mayhew, about ten millions of eels, amounting to a weight of 1,500,000 lbs., are annually sold in Billingsgate market. These figures show us at once that the multiplication of eels in our sluggish rivers, which only contain such fish as are comparatively speaking worthless, is a matter worth consideration, and powerfully pleads for the protection and transplantation of the elvers wherever they are likely to prosper.
Eels are extremely susceptible of cold; none whatever are found in the Arctic regions, and at the approach of winter they bury themselves in the mud, where they remain in a state of torpidity until the genial warmth of spring recalls them to a more active state of existence. In this condition they are frequently taken by eel-spears, and in Somersetshire the people know how to find the holes in the banks of rivers in which eels are laid up, by the hoar-frost not lying over them as it does elsewhere, and dig them out in heaps. Though generally only from two to three feet long, eels sometimes acquire a much larger size. Specimens six feet long and fifteen pounds in weight are occasionally captured, and Yarrell saw at Cambridge the preserved skins of two which weighed together fifty pounds. They were taken on draining a fen-dyke at Wisbeach. As eels are but slow in growth, these sizes speak for a great longevity.
Conger Eel.
The Conger is in its general appearance so nearly allied to the common eel that it might easily be mistaken for the same species. It, however, materially differs from it by its darker colour in the upper part, and its brighter hue beneath, by its dorsal fin beginning near the head, and by its snout generally projecting beyond the lower jaw.
This marine giant of the eel tribe attains a length of ten feet, and a weight of 130 pounds, and is well known on all the rocky parts of the coast of the British Islands, though nowhere more abundant than on the Cornish coast, where, according to Mr. Couch, it is not uncommon for a boat with three men to bring on shore from five hundredweight to two tons. The fishing for congers is always performed at night, and not unattended with danger, as it is quite a common occurrence for a conger to attack the fishermen with open jaws, and so great is the strength of the large specimens that they have occasionally succeeded in pulling the fisherman quite out of his boat, if by any chance he has fastened the line to his arm. The congers that keep among rocks hide themselves in crevices, where they are not unfrequently left by the retiring tide; but in situations free from rocks, congers hide themselves by burrowing in the ground, where it is customary on some parts of the coast of France to employ dogs in their search. In spite of its tough flesh and exceedingly nauseous smell, the conger was highly esteemed by Greek epicures, and in England in the time of the Henrys considered an article of food fit for a king. Thus, the Prince and Poins, according to Falstaff's account, found amongst other reasons for their companionship this one: that both of them were fond of conger and fennel sauce. In our times its flesh, though banished from all aristocratic tables, meets a ready sale at a low price among the poorer classes. In the Isle of Man the conger may be said to take the place of the poor man's pig; it is his bacon, which he would find difficult to save if it were not for these large eels, which are caught in great abundance, and sold at the rate of 2d. or 3d. per lb. The Manx men split the congers, and then salt them and hang them up to dry on their cottage walls, where they do not exactly contribute to perfume the gale.
The Murry or Muræna differs from the common eel by the want of pectoral fins, and its beautifully-marked skin. It is said to live with equal facility in fresh or salt water, though generally found at sea, and it is as common in the Pacific as it is in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The only specimen on record as a British fish was caught by a fisherman of Polperro, October 8, 1834; its length was four feet four inches. The muræna has acquired a kind of historical celebrity from the strange fondness with which it was cherished by the Romans, who preserved large quantities of them in their numerous vivaria, as we do the lustrous gold-fish in the water-basins of our gardens. A certain Cajus Hirrius, who lived in the time of Julius Cæsar, was the first that introduced the fashion, which soon became a passion among the wealthy senators and knights of the imperial city, who used to deck their especial pets with all kinds of ornaments. The celebrated orator, Hortensius, the rival of Cicero, had a piscina at Bauli, on the gulf of Baiæ, where he took great delight in a favourite murry that would come at his call and feed from his hand. When the creature died, he was unable to stop his tears; and another celebrated Roman, L. Licinius Crassus, appears to have had an equally tender heart, for he, too, wept at the death of his fishy darling. Vedius Pollio, a Roman knight, has even acquired through these fishes a scandalous renown, by causing now and then a slave that had been guilty of some slight offence to be cast alive and naked into their piscina, and amusing himself with the sight of the murrys lacerating and devouring the body. That this wretch was a friend of the Emperor Augustus harmonises but badly with the ideas of the urbanity of his court which we may have formed from the poems of Horace and Virgil. It is but fair, however, to the character of the emperor to state that he reprobated Pollio's cruelty, and ordered his fish-pond to be filled up.
Ammodyte, or Launce.