The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-10-25
THE SLIPPERY ELL
 KNOWS GREAT DEAL
Unless GraveSend Bay Experts
 Are Wrong
WHAT SOMETIMES HAPPENS
When They Are Pumped Up By Sand Sucking Dredge-How Do They Get Into the Great
 Lakes2

From the New York Sun.
 That sand sucker Is certainly making a new Coney Island creek all right" said one of a group of men summing them selves on the cabin top of the auxiliary sloop Jennie R. At the same time he nodded toward a big dredge that is malk- ing a channel from the Harway avenue lift bridge straight out to the deep water of the lower bay.
 The dredge, with her powerful sucker out in front, turns aside for nothing. When she comes to a small island she sucks the sand from beneath the turf and the~undermined surface of the island caves in and drifts away in big patches on the tide The mixture of sand and water is pped from the dredge to the adjacent lowlands, and in this way an area equivalent to many city blocks has been filled in with clean white sand.
 The piping looks to be about "A inches in diameter. made of sheet metal and riveted, and 1t delivers its outpour of sand and water hundreds of feet pack of the dredge. The lengths of piping arc rather loosly put together, and streams of leakage IS big as a mans arm rush out with a roar.
 Tt beats all' said Capt. Bill Kenney, the Jennie R.'s skipper, "how that suck CT takes up things-fish, soft clans.
 
 to pass through the pump goes up the spout and is whisked toward the sand at the far end of the piping"
 Tt ought to be easy fishing up there on the sand" remarked a stranger who was standing on the dock.
 "The youngsters pick up quite a few fish, crabs. and clams,' said Kenrey.
 And eels?" the stranger suggested.
 ''No, not so many eels. You see the eel is most intelligent and able bodied creature. Of course the eels are drawn into the sucker and go through the pump like the other things, but when they find themselves forced on through the long discharge pipes they know that something is wrong and they set about trying to get out
 You see those streams pouring down from the leak holes in the piping?" Well when an eel is trying to make his way back to where the sucker of the dredge took him in he comes to one of these leaks and out he goes.
 He looks around and sees that he is maybe 50 feet from any water but that which comes out of the leak hole and spreads thinly over the sand. And then he does a stunt you wouldn't think he could do unless you knew quite a lot about eels.'
 What does he do?" the stranger, asked. Kenney pointed an index finger toward the sky, wriggled it upward with a spiral motion and said:
 Goes back into the pipe'
 "Wonderful," exclaimed the stranger.
 "Yes" said Kenney, ''he upends him. self on his tail you see wiggle and black streak shoots up the stream and through the hole in the pipe. Then I sup pose he makes his way back along the inside of the pipe, through the pump and into the bay"
 q can hardly credit it." the stranger said. shaking his head.
 "Oh, I don't know" broke in a man who is something of naturalist and nature faker. How do the cells get into the Great Lakes?
 "They breed there,' replied the stranger.
 "Eels do not reproduce in fresh water,' the naturalist asserted "It has been dis covered in recent years that they deposit their spawn off shore in salt water sev- eral hundred fathoms deep.
 "The young eels when about the size of a sewing needle start in myriads from the deep water for the mouths of rivers and creeks and work their way toward the headwaters.
 What do they do when they come to Niagara Falls?p the naturalist continued. Keep right on, up the falls, of course; else how do they get into the lakes?'
 That doesn't sound so unreasonable" said a man whose boyhood was spent up country. "An eagle or a hen hawk scars slowly in a calm; but if you watch one soaring in a stiff wind you will see him shoot up with wonderful speed when he shifts his wings"
 Same way with sailing skiff' added a bayman. "The stiffer the breeze of wind the faster she will beat her way up . channel"
 Tt must be on this same principle that the eels work their way up the streams of water pouring down from the dredge pipe" said Kenney. There's no nedying an ell knows a lot about hydraulics.
 with nothing but water to brace himself against or hold on to he will stay there al if he was soldered on when you get him on a hook and line. I'm inclined to think an eel can make his way against any stream or cata- ract."
 "Td like to see one go up against a stream of water such as they use in hydraulic mining up in the northwest, said another man of the group. It comes out of a nozzle under pressure of a fall of a thousand feet or more, and if you strike the stream with the blade of an axe yard or so from the nozzle the axe will rebound as if you had struck it against rod of steel" Well, that might be a trifie too stifr a current for these Gravesend Bay eels," Kenney admitted.