Will lend its ray to point the sheltering cove
Where they may land in safety. Now they spy
The torches blazing on the dark-lined shore,
And know that aid is nigh. Those on the beach
Have in a flash of moonlight seen the boat
Careering swiftly onward to the shore,
And post them here and there along the rocks.
Foremost is she, the gallant helmsman's wife,
Her raised torch defining her frail form,
Stooping to pierce the darkness o'er the waves.
His quick eye soon detects her by the light
Of the bright torch, which also shows beneath
An opening in the rocks. Thither he guides
The bark, and dares to win the port.

She waves the torch in token they are seen,

And spreads its red light o'er the port beneath.

The port is almost gained! Good Heavens! a wave

Hath dashed them on the rocks! But see! they're borne
On its wild crest right onward to the shore-
All-save one-the helmsman;-the swirling wave
Hath hurled him headlong 'gainst the rock's deep base
At his wife's feet. No hand dare save him now!
His wife she sees him toss his arms to her-
His last farewell! Reason hath fled her brain!
Wildly she shrieks his name, and frantic leaps,
Still clutching fast the torch, into the flood!
And now they lie beneath the same tomb-stone :
Death did not part whom deathless love made one!

LOOSE NOTES IN NATURAL HISTORY.

FISH FABLES.-THE EEL.

No fish, perhaps, has enjoyed so wide a celebrity, and been the subject of so much accumulated fable, as the eel. To account for its origin, more theories have been broached than have been broached to account for the origin of evil; nor, indeed, to this hour has it been satisfactorily determined whether the young of this ubiquitous fish be evolved from an egg, or wriggles into existence a fully-developed grig. Our wonder, therefore, is infinitesimally small to find the earlier Grecian naturalists baffled in devising for their favourite bonne-bouche a satisfactory terrestrial origin, solving the difficulty by giving it a celestial one; nor is our admiration materially heightened at further finding the honours of anguillary paternity conferred upon the mighty Thunderer himself, remembering, as we do, that in those very years, that exalted personage was entertaining at his hospitable board, as representatives of blight and mildew, a god Rubigus and a goddess Rubigo. Quite en règle, too, seems to us the fact that Aristotle should have played the part of devil's advocate at this ichthyological canonisation; although, by the way, we cannot quite forgive him for having (on the principle, we may suppose, of the crafty old eel-sniggler in Alciatus' Emblems, who fouled the stream that he might catch his fish,) attributed to the intra-uterine action of the mud the generation of "the solitary race that have neither seed nor offspring." pared, however, to pardon Oppian for enunciating a somewhat similar We are quite pretheory; for, if we may augur from the muddy verses of that grandiloquent worthy, which, even to the initiated, exhale a "most ancient and fish-like odour," he must have had a most unsavoury love of such lutetian fish as those with which our old Juvenalian acquaintance, Virro, entertained his humble and obsequious guest

"Snake-like eels of that unwholesome breed,
Which fatten where Cloaca's torrents pour;
Or midst the drains that in Suburra tlow,

Swim the foul streams which fill the crypts below."*

The next who tried to find a "fig-leaf for his eel," and failed, was Pliny, who, strange to say, in the hypothesis which he propounded, unwittingly indicated the precise mode of generation which actually takes place in some of the lower animal organisations. His theory was, that the eel, on feeling the approach of senescence, instinctively rubs himself to pieces against the rocks, and that out of the living detritus a new brood issuesjust as in our nursery literature, an effete moon is quite satisfactorily disposed of by being cut up into stars. Pliny's hypothesis, however, ingenious as it was, wholly failed to satisfy the dilettanti who could contrive, in accordance with the Virgilian recipe, to people their hives from the carcase of a dead heifer. These conjurors, therefore, speedily discovered that their eel-ponds might be stocked just as easily as their hives, by immersing for a sufficient time in a glutinous lymph, the hairs of a horse's tail. Nor can it be said of this singular metamorphosis,

"This history

Handed from ages down-this nurse's tale, Which children, open-eye'd and mouth'd, devour;"that it "lives no longer in the faith of reason.' own school-boy experiments in the paternal horse-pond, we find it stated To say nothing of our upon undoubted authority, that to this day it is a popular superstition in Sicily, that one of the common snakes of the country owes its being to a prolonged maceration of the equine appendage in water, and that many a *Twp Ogia Tov irxeλor" To hold an cel with a fig-leaf," is a very old Grecian Proverb.

W

peasant will engage, "for a consideration," to show the incredulous the process of transformation.

But we are not yet quite done with the vexed question of anguillary generation. Descending to comparatively recent times, we find Van Helmont attributing their birth to some mysterious prolific principle latent in the May dew; Valisnieri seeking for the anguillary foetus in the swimbladder; Lewenhoeck in the urinary bladder, and Rondolet in the intestines of the adult fish; while others have, with equal infelicity, sought to identify with the germinal grig the various parasites which infest the bodies and gills of the carp, the cod, and the salmon.

What, then, are we to make of this perplexing question? Must we, as has been predicted, submit to a mystery unless we adopt a fable? We may repudiate with one voice the untenable notions of equivocal production, spontaneous generation, and the vitalising properties of mud; but our repudiation leaves us exactly where we were. All attempts to prove the eel viviparous have failed. Spallanzani, out of the "many millions" of fish which he examined, could detect neither foetus nor ovaries; and those who profess to have seen the latter,* are so few and so comparatively undistinguished, that no naturalist of note, save Lacepède, has ventured to consider the question as set at rest. Considering the prodigious fecundity of the race, these results are certainly startling.

But before allowing our eel to slip fairly through our fingers, we would fain address a word of warning to the lovers of that truly Apician dainty. Mr Mayhew, in his "London Labour and the London Poor," tells us of individuals who will, for months together, devour from thirty to forty lengths of stewed eel daily, washing them down with six or seven tea-cups' full of the glutinous liquor in which they have been stewed. Have those luxurious Sybarites no fear of bronchial affections before their eyes? Pliny, we all know, loved eels to the full as well as that transcendental Achoean who declared that the fragrant odour exhaled from the fish in cooking was sufficiently appetising to restore the lost sense of smell to a dead man's nose; and yet, does not even Pliny declare that eels "bee hurtfull to the throat, and make a man to lose his voice?" Many a plump anguilla, doubtless, from the swamps of Commachio, did the good fathers of Salerno in their day devour; yet, is it not written (in spavined enough verse, alas!) in their dietetic code, that

Vocibus anguille pravæ sunt si comedantur
Qui physice non ignorant hoc significantur?

One consolation, however, we are enabled, through the kindness of Signor Platina, to offer to our doubtless now disconsolate Epicurean, and that is, that the floating fat and grease, skimmed off the surface of the liquor in which his favourite dainty is being stewed, and smeared upon the head, is sovereign for making the hair grow!

But anguilla est, elabitur—our eel is off, and we must needs now hie us to fresh pastures. With Pliny as our guide, however, we cannot go far astray; and lo! is not yon a lamprey? Him you may know at once from his sucker-shaped mouth, within which lies a little nimble, "rasping tongue, stuck all over with points, and always on the wag." See how he clings to the rock on which he has fastened, and sucks away with a pertinacity that threatens to give the lie to the proverb, and prove the possibility of extracting blood even from a stone! Do you remember how that weasel-like creature obtained his Latin name of remora? H-m-m-well! Pliny will remind you.

"The current of the sea is great," saith worthy Master Holland in his

* The most distinguished of those observers were Muller and Mondini.

*

translation of that fine old Roman, "its tides mighty, the winds puissant and forcible, and, more than that, ores and sails withal to help forward the rest are mighty and powerful; and yet there is one little sillie fish, Echeneis, that checketh, scorneth, and arresteth them all. Let the winds blow as much as they will, rage the storms and tempests never so strong, even yet this little fish commandeth their fury, restraineth their puissance, and, maugre all their force, as great as it is, compelleth the ships to stand still! Why should our ships and armadas at sea make such turrets on the walls and forecastles, when one little fish, (see the vanitie of man!) is able to arrest and stay perforce our goodly and tall ships? Certes, reported it is that in the navall battle before Actium, wherein Anthony and Cleopatra were defeated by Augustus, one of these fishes staid the admirall ship whereon M. Anthony was, at what time hee made all the haste and means hee could devise, with help of ores, to encourage his people from ship to ship, and could not prevail, until hee was forced to abandon the same admirall, and goe into another galley. Meanwhile, the armada of Augustus Cæsar, seeing the disorder, charged with greater violence, and soon invested the fleet of Anthony. Of late days, also, and within our remembrance, the like happened to the roiall ship of the Emperor Caius Caligula, at what time as hee rowed back and made sail from Astura to Antium, and as soon as the vessel (a gallien; it was furnished with five banks of ores to a side) was perceived alone in the fleet to stand still, presently a number of bold fellows leapt out of their ships into the sea, to search after the said galley what the reason might bee that it stirred not, and found one of these fishes sticking fast to the vere helme, which being reported to C. Caligula, hee fumed and sware as an emperor, taking a great indignation that so small a thing as this should hold her back perforce, and check the strength of all his warriors, notwithstanding there were no fewer than four hundred lustie men in his galley that laboured at the ore all that ever they could do to the contrary. This fish presaged an unfortunate event, for no sooner was hee arrived at Rome, but some souldiours, in a mutinie, fell upon him, and stabbed him to death."

The same writer, a little further on, tells us, on the authority of one Statius Libonius, an anecdote of certain worms or serpents seen by his informant "within Ganges, a river of India," which we take to have been lampreys, viewed "through the microscope of a warm imagination, and therefore highly magnified." "Within Ganges, a river of India, there be fishy, snouted, and tailed dolphins, fifteen cubits long, called Platanistce; and Statius Libonius reporteth as strange a thing besides, namely, that in the said river there bee certain worms or serpents with two fins of a side, sixty cubits long, of colour blue, which bee so strong, that when the elephants come into the river for drink, they catch fast hold with their teeth by their trunks or muzzles, and, maugre their hearts, force them down under the water, of such force and power they are." Alas and alas! for the credulity of mankind, who, "ever sceptical in the wrong place," have in all ages

"Swallowed nonsense and a lie
With greediness and gluttony!'

If we may believe all that ichthyologists assert, the lamprey has fully sustained in modern times his ancient reputation. Rondolet-but we prefer relating the anecdote in the language of one, of whom it may be said, as he-although for a very different reason-hath himself said of Oppian, that he appears to have been born as much a fish as a poet, so felicitous is

* Echeneis, literally Stay-Ship, the Greek name of the lamprey.

his diction, and so profound his knowledge of piscine economy. "Rondolet," then, "informs us that he himself met with an adventure very like to that of Caius Caligula. He was going to Rome in the suite of Cardinal Tournon, in a fine ship, which was scudding glibly before the wind, when she suddenly came to a standstill, and, after much wonderment and investigation as to the nature of the impediment, a lamprey was found fixed to the helm, which was removed not without difficulty, when the vessel, freed from the incumbrance, proceeded on her course. Rondolet invokes the whole crew to attest his veracity and their cognizance of a fact which we would not believe though it were down in the captain's logbook."

All the world has heard of that "Roman gentleman," as Pliny calls him, Vedius Pollio by name, who, either to feed his anger, or feed his fish, was in the sportive habit of causing offending slaves to be thrown into the stews where he kept his muræna-“ "Not," says Pliny's quaint translator, "that there were not wilde beastes ynow upon lande for this feate, but because hee tooke pleasure to beholde a manne torn and plucket in pieces all at once, which pleasaunt sight hee could not see upon any other beastes upon lande." It is of this fish, the pet and the delight of the Roman Apicii, who, according to Juvenal,

"Would for its shining scales a sum devote

More than would buy nets, fisherman, and boats,"

that Theophrastus relates the pleasant fable, that being able, like the common eel, to exist for a considerable time out of water, the female occasionally avails herself of the privilege to take a moonlight excursion upon terra firma, in order to hold a little loving confabulation with the male viper, who, however, "before joining company, takes the laudable precaution of depositing his venom under a stone, and as soon as his fishy friend has wished him good night, recovers and carefully reabsorbs it." Of the same fish Kiranides reports that she has three mortal foes, the crab, the cuttle, and the conger, and that to immerse either of these in the same water with her, "no wise man would any longer make the mistake, the experiment having been made over and over again, and always with one result, namely, that, on removing the lid of the stewpan, one or other of the combitants has been invariably found amissing, and, notwithstanding its fierceness and superior strength, generally the muræna." 0, Kiranides! Kiranides!

There is a passage in Daniel's Rural Sports which, when placed side by side with a passage from Theophrastus, as quoted by Pliny, will perhaps satisfy some at least of our readers that what may at first sight look marvellously like a fable is not necessarily fabulous. We allude to the Greek naturalist's account of living subterranean fish. "Strange wonders," saith Master Holland, whom we shall take as a substitute for Pliny, "hee (Theophrastus) tells of certaine kinds of fishes, which are about Babylon, where there bee many places subject to the inundations of the Euphrates and other rivers, and wherein water standeth after that the rivers are returned within their bankes, in which the fishe remain in certain holes and caves. Some of them (saith he) used to issue forth on lande for foode and releafe, going upon their finnes in lieu of feete, and wagging their tailes ever as they goe; and if any chase them, or come to take them, they will retire into their ditches aforsaide, and there make

"This part of the recital is probably correct, no bull-dog, badger, or limpet being more adhesive than a lamprey. Once fastened to an object, he will not suffer it to escape. Pennant cites an instance of the lamprey, which weighed eight pounds, adhering to a body of twelve pounds so firmly as to raise it when he himself was raised into the air."