This is so fairly put, that I will tell what I have seen, hoping that this will be a sufficient explanation.

In June, 1850, I chanced to go down to the bank of the Ribble, and there I saw a column of small Eels steadily making their way up the stream.  I should suppose there might be fifty in every lineal yard, for they kept pretty close to the bank, apparently because they met with less resistance from the stream, and without pretending to accuracy I supposed they travelled at the rate of a mile an hour.  This was about five o’clock in the afternoon, and I went to look for them about nine in the evening—­they were still going in one unbroken column.  How long they had been going when I first saw them, and how long they continued to go after my second visit, I don’t know, but many thousands—­perhaps millions—­must have passed that day.  At this rate (of a mile an hour) they would have required little more than two days to reach G. H.’s pond, fifty miles from the sea; but he says they had to pass over three or four waterfalls and a perpendicular sluice-board.  If these waterfalls and the sluice-board were covered with moss, they would climb them as readily as a cat does a ladder.  I have seen them in swarms at a perpendicular weir here, winding their way through the damp moss with which the stones are covered; but this was not all:  where there was no moss, the little things seemed to have the power of adhering to the perpendicular face of the stones, like so many snails.  I must not omit to remark, that although they seemed to choose the margin of the stream for the sake of easier travelling, yet they took care to keep in the stream, as I had a nice opportunity of observing.

At the point where I first saw them, the tail goit of a water-wheel had its junction with the river, but being Sunday there was no current there—­not a single Eel took its course up the goit, although the water was deeper there than where they went.  The water being low and perfectly clear, I could trace their course both above and below the place where I stood without any difficulty.

If we allowed that they travelled a mile in the hour, and that the obstructions of the waterfalls and sluice-board took as long to get over as all the rest of the journey, they would be able to reach G. H.’s pond in four days from the sea; and from what I have seen of their ability to surmount such obstructions, I am quite convinced that they would travel that distance in the time.  But say they were a week—­they would not grow much in that time, particularly if they had been travelling without food the whole of the distance, and that they must have done so, is proved to my mind by their keeping in column; for if they had dispersed to seek for food, by what contrivance were they marshalled into line again, to enable them to proceed?  Now the place I saw them is forty miles from the sea, although not that distance from salt-water.  T. says it is no proof that Eels