Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/351

Rh pond contained only very small fish was confirmed, if I recollect right, by brother anglers, who also informed me that another pond in the neighbourhood was similarly stocked, and that those pigmy tench, though they never increased in bulk in their native waters, yet did so if removed to another pond.—Arthur Hussey; Rottingdeane, Sussex, August 7, 1843.

Note on the Voracity of the Eel. A correspondent of 'The Zoologist' relates an instance he witnessed of the voracity of the eel (Zool. 108), which is somewhat similar to an occurrence I beheld many years ago. On a visit to the well-known Sussex ruin, Bodiam castle, one of my brothers and myself, looking rather suddenly out of a large window upon the moat, disturbed a water-hen, which dived instantly, when it was seized by an eel, and never rose again. The water not being perfectly clear, I could not distinctly observe the struggle, but it appeared as if the fish wound itself round the bird, so as to confine its energies, somewhat in the manner of the boa constrictor. The eel must have been large, as the water-hen was an old one. Most deep-water anglers, when fishing for something else, must have been tormented by catching an eel, which usually swallows the hook very deep, and by writhing and twisting ties the line into knots, and very probably breaks it. Under such circumstances I learned to save my tackle by immediately pressing one foot hard upon the fish, while with a knife I divided the spine close to the head, which completely kills the eel, though all motion does not instantly cease. A little salt put into the eel's mouth also causes immediate death.—Id.

Notes on the capture of large Fishes on the Trent, near Melbourne, Derbyshire. At the northern extremity of Donnington park is a beautifully wooded eminence, overhanging the bosom of the Trent, called Donnington cliff, immediately below which stands a building of rather ornamental character, now used as a paper-mill, but which is somewhat celebrated as having been a strongly fortified place of the royalists during the civil wars. The dam and weir belonging to the mill are the resort of fishes of almost every description. Eels, perch and pike are frequently taken here, and salmon may be oftentimes seen leaping and sporting up the weir. Amongst five of the latter caught there on the night of the 23rd of July, 1842, was a remarkably fine one, weighing upwards of 25 lbs., being, we believe, the finest one taken near the spot. King's mills has long been a favourite locality with the sturgeon (Acipenser Sturio), and several individuals of formidable size have occasionally been captured in its vicinity, from the time of King John to the present. In the ' Annals of Burton Monastery,' a curious old record of monkish and ecclesiastical life, is the following quaint memorandum. " 1225. In this same yeare, in the waters of ye Trent near Donnington Castle, about ye time of ye Assension of our Lord, there was taken a fish called a Sturgeon, the old people of those parts then affirming that a similar fish was taken in the same place the very yeare before King John was crowned." Stebbing Shaw, the historian of Staffordshire, asserts that one was caught at King's mills in 1791, seven feet long; and in the year 1838, another was taken in the nets there of very considerable magnitude, but its exact dimensions we have never been able to ascertain, but we have heard its length stated to be upwards of 8 feet.—J.J. Briggs; Melbourne, Derbyshire, September, 1843.