[2461] By this name, Cuvier says, he calls the tentacles or feelers, which adhere to the head of the polypus, and which it uses equally for the purpose of swimming or crawling.
[2462] Spallanzani, in his “Nat. Hist. of the Eel in the Lagunes of Comacchio,” says, that immediately after their birth they retreat to the Lagunes, and at the end of five years re-enter the river Po.
[2463] Eighty or a hundred hours at most, Spallanzani says.
[2464] Cold, or a foul state of the water, Cuvier says, is very destructive to the eel.
[2465] Or Pleiades. See c. [20].
[2466] Aristotle, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 75, says the same, and likewise that they feed mostly at night. The reason for their not floating when dead, he says, is their peculiar conformation; the belly being so remarkably small that the water cannot find an entrance; added to which they have no fat upon them.
[2467] See B. iii. c. 23.
[2468] See B. iii. c. 20.
[2469] The setting of the Pleiades or the rising of Arcturus. See B. ii. c. 47.
[2470] Spallanzani informs us that the fishermen of the Lagunes of Comacchio form with reeds small chambers, by means of which they take the eels when endeavouring to re-enter the river Po; in these such vast multitudes are collected, that they are absolutely to be seen above the surface of the water.