Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1895-09-25
.SAVANTS ON THE EEL.
SOME POINTS FOR SCIENCE CONTRIB
UTED By RURALlSTS.

just How the Slim and slippery Members
of the Fish Family Propagate l. an Un-
settled Question Views Held by Old
Timers In Different Localities.
81 notice that science is little mixed
yet on the question of how eels propa-
gate and perpetuate their species and
can't just exactly make up its mind
how to settle it, said New York
sportsman, 'but if science should take
a few trips out along sundry waters
where the native resident bobs for eels
and should interview ono of the rural
savants Oh the subject it would get
some ideas that might help it along
toward solving the mystery of the eel.
81 was fishing for pickerel once in
Lake Lamoka, high among the hills Of
western New York, and found that the
lake was literally alive with eels. I
asked a bewhiskered and wise looking
citizen of the locality, who was fishing
for bullheads, how he accounted for eels
being so plentiful in that lake.
I" We'll, sir, said he, I've saw eels
from most everywheres-salt water,
fresh water, muddy water, clear water,
still water and runnin water-but /
never see no eels from any water that
had such coverin of slime on 'em as
the eels in this here lake does. And
that's why eels is so uncommon plenty
here. They can't help themselves.
There's good CROWN O. jest the right
kind o. weeds on the bottom o. the lake,
and the bushes hangs so low on shore
that they dip into the water every here
and there. So you see the old eels has
the best kind O. rubbin places, and they
leave such tremendous coatin O. their
outside coverin there that the young
eels that grow out Of it is simply barrels
full every year. Believe it! Believe
that's the way eels breed Why, don't
I know it is? Didn't nobody never tell
you that the Shiny coatin ON eels is jest
like the inside of a hens egg that
matches out the chicken? Jest EXACTLY,
only it matches eels 'sted o. chickens.
Why, everybody knows that around
herep
"And found that if all the people in
that locality didn' It know it they firmly
believed they did, which was just as
good. One veteran believer that eels
were Matched from eel slime deposited
on weeds and bushes said that when he
was boy the bushes were thicker along
the shores of the lake than they were
now.
"'I member one season., said he,
that somethin got to ailin the weeds at
the bottom o. the lake, and the old eels
didn't seem to banker after 'em, and
consequently they come out and rubbed
themselves more'n usual on the shore
bushes. l never seen such bearin o.
young eels before nor sence, and there
never was. The bushes hung fuller Of
'em than cur'n bushes does o. cur n 8,
and before they got ready to drop into
the water and go to pasturin on the bot
tom the shores O. the lake looked as If
bitin frost had struck it. The eels had
eat ev'ry leaf off O. every bush in sightP
"That is the way they account for
tu0 DIOpdkdtlOu VI OC4o LII Olu CtCoDCA
county. Just over the line, in Potter
county, Pa, and all along the Allegheny
waters, the old time fishermen, found,
had theory of their own about how
eel reproduction came about. Their be-
lief is that the hellbender, whose habi-
tat is the waters Of the Ohio basin, is
the father of eels. The hellbender has.
legs, is probably a lizard, but surely is
hideous, and the female hellbender lays
about 100 eggs, fastened together as in
chain, like frogs eggs. Yet men ON
Allegheny waters, who claim the privi-
lege of voting and expect Christian bur-
ial, will solemnly tell you that from
those eggs come eels The strangest part
Of this insistence is that there are no
eels in Allegheny waters, nor in any
waters of the Ohio or Mississippi basins,
except what may have resulted from ex-
periments in transplanting stock from
native waters. I took it upon myself
once to try to convince a believer in
this hellbender paternity of cells of the
utter impossibility of it, and thought to
clinch my argument by the fact Of there
being no eels in hellbender waters.
"'Course there ain t ! exclaimed the
hellbender advocate. "And why? The
minute eels gifts their eyes on hellbend-
ers, and it by and by breaks in ON 'em
that hellbenders are their paps, away
they skitter. They pull out O. them wa
ters like the children of Israel maxim
tracks out of Egypt, and they never
come back. Why, dog on it Hellbend-
ers is stockin all your streams over east
with eels if you only know'd itr
81 met plausible old fisherman once
near the headwaters of the Charlotte
river, which is one of the New York
state headwaters of the Susquehanna
river, rising within stone tossing dis
tance of the Delaware river, in Scho-
harie county, who assured me that the
eel was at its beginning but the egg Of
a water beetle, deposited in the she'll Of
the fresh water clam or mussel. There
it Matched and became a troublesome
parasite of the mussel, which at last
opened its she'll and died, whereupon
the parasite, then slender worm, went
forth into the stream, grew betimes and
waxed fat, and thus became an eel.
This amazing theory of the development
of an eel once found believers among
the fishermen of the drowned lands Of
the Waikiki, in Orange county, N. Y,
and Sussex county, N. J. In the upper
Delaware valley it is persistently MAIN
tanned by old rivermen that the lamprey
is the male eel, and that all other eels
are females; that nine of every ten eel
eggs Matched are silver cells, or females,
and the remaining one a male, or lam
prey.
''There are many other interesting
theories of eel propagation advanced by
native thinkers in other intensely rural
districts, and tell you science ought to
go out and talk with them. It would
get some points New York Sum-
Superstitions of Jamaica.
There is curious superstition that if
death occurs in the house all the wa
ter in it is poisoned at once and must be
thrown away, the reason given being
that "death'' cools his "sting' after de-