on the banks of some particular ponds or rivers, apted by nature for that
end; which in a few clays are, by the sun's heat, turned into Eels: and
some of the Ancients have called the Eels that are thus bred, the
offspring of Jove. I have seen, in the beginning of July, in a river not far
from Canterbury, some parts of it covered over with young Eels, about
the thickness of a straw; and these Eels did lie on the top of that water,
as thick as motes are said to be in the sun: and I have heard the like of
other rivers, as namely, in Severn, where they are called Yelvers; and in
a pond, or mere near unto Staffordshire, where, about a set time in
summer, such small Eels abound so much, that many of the poorer sort
of people that inhabit near to it, take such Eels out of this mere with
sieves or sheets; and make a kind of Eel-cake of them, and eat it like as
bread. And Gesner quotes Venerable Bede, to say, that in England there
is an island called Ely, by reason of the innumerable number of Eels
that breed in it. But that Eels may be bred as some worms, and some
kind of bees and wasps are, either of dew, or out of the corruption of
the earth, seems to be made probable by the barnacles and young
goslings bred by the sun's heat and the rotten planks of an old ship, and
hatched of trees; both which are related for truths by Du Bartas and
Lobel, and also by our learned Camden, and laborious Gerhard in his
Herbal.

It is said by Rondeletius, that those Eels that are bred in rivers that
relate to or be nearer to the sea, never return to the fresh waters, as the
Salmon does always desire to do, when they have once tasted the salt
water; and I do the more easily believe this, because I am certain that
powdered beef is a most excellent bait to catch an Eel. And though Sir
Francis Bacon will allow the Eel's life to be but ten years, yet he, in his
History of Life and Death, mentions a Lamprey, belonging to the
Roman emperor, to be made tame, and so kept for almost threescorc