EECKHOUT, GERBRAND VAN DEN, 1621-74; a painter, b. in Amsterdam; a pupil of Rembrandt, whose style he successfully imitated. As a portrait painter he had a peculiarly superior talent for expressing character. Among his best compositions are " Christ in the Temple," and " Haman and Mordecai." a t. of Belgium, in the province of East Flanders, stands on the high-road between Ghent and Bruges, and is 12 m..n.w.- from the former. It is clean and well built; and has manufactures of woolens, cottons, hats, tobacco, chocolate, soap, etc.; also breweries, distilleries, vinegar-works, salt-refineries, dye-works, oil-mills,. and a thriving trade in linen, cattle, and timber, as well as in grain, for which it has a large weekly market. Pop. '73, 9,564.
EEL, a name popularly given to all serpent-shaped or worm-shaped fishes, and some times extended to other animals of similar form, but otherwise extremely different, as the eels in paste, in vinegar, etc. The fishes to which this name is most commonly _applied are malaeopterous fishes destitute of ventral fins, and having the body covered by a soft thick slimy skin, the scales very minute, and often almost invisible, or entirely wanting. Most of them were included in the Limman genus murcena, and now consti tute the family murcanidce, divided by some naturalists into the families synbranehidce, murcenida, anguillidce, congerida, and ophisuridcs. All these have the skeleton destitute of ribs, and the fin-rays not .jointed; whilst the gymnotidce, including the electric eels (see GYMNOTUS), have ribs encompassing the belly, and the fin-rays jointed or branched. In all the eels, the gill-orifices are very small, and are situated far back, so that there is a long passage from the gill-chamber outwards; and hence, the gills not soon becoming dry, these fishes can remain out of water for a considerable time without injury, and some of them occasionally leave it of their own accord. The smallness of the gill opening is also regarded as probably indicative of feebleness of respiration; and this, as in reptiles, is connected with extreme tenacity of life.—The synbranchidce have the gill passages so united under a common integument, as to present externally only a single orifice. They are almost destitute of fins. The species are few, and found only in tropical and sub-tropical seas.---:The murcenidcs are also generally destitute of fins, or nearly so; they are all destitute of scales. They are all marine.—The anguillida3, on the contrary, are fresh-water fishes, although some of them occasionally visit the sea. They have pretty large pectoral fins, anal and dorsal fins extending to and encompassing the tip of the tail, and numerous longish scales imbedded in groups in the skin, so as to resemble lattice-work. To these the congers (q.v.), although marine, are very nearly
allied. The ophisuricke, or snake-eels (q.v.), of the Mediterranean and other seas, are more widely different, and are easily distinguished by the tail ending in a conical finless point.
Until recently, all the British fresh-water eels were confounded together as of one species (anguilla vulgares): Mr. Yarrell was the first accurately to distinguish them, and to show that there are at least three, if not four species, differing considerably in form, and in anatomical characters, as the number and form of the vertebrae, etc. Two •of these seem to be very generally diffused, the SFIARY-NOSED E. (A. acutirostris or A. vulgaris) and the BROAD-NOSED E. (A. /atirostri8). The difference in the form of the snout, which these names indicate, is very marked and obvious, and the general form of the sharp-nosed E. is also more slender.—The SNIG E. (A. mediorostris), found in some -of the English rivers, is intermediate in the form of its snout, and is considered superior to the other kinds for the table. Its cervical vertebrae are destitute of the spinous processes which are found in both the other species. It is comparatively small. The sharp-nosed E. seems to attain the greatest size, sometimes almost 30 lbs. weight. It migrates on the approach of winter to the warmer brackish water of estuaries, often entering water which is•perfectly salt; or if migration is impossible, it buries itself in mud. Eels are taken in great numbers during winter by means of eel-spears, or forks with -several prongs, plunged into the mud: Sometimes they are digged out of the mud of river-banks, where large numbers are found congregated together. Tile eels which descend to estuaries or to the sea deposit their spawn there, and countless multitudes of young eels ascend rivers in spring, The passage of the young eels is called on the Thames the eel-fare, from a Saxon word signifying to pass or travel. So strong is the instinct which impels them, that they surmount obstacles apparently far more than sufficient to arrest their progress; they have been seen to ascend the large posts of flood gates, " those which die, stick to the posts; others, which get a little higher, meet with the same fate, until at last a sufficient layer of them is formed to enable the rest to over come the difficulty of the passage." Young eels have also sometimes been met with in large numbers performing migrations on land among moist grass, generally in the even ing or during the night; but the purpose of these migrations is not very well understood, nor are they known to take place with regularity.—Those eels which cannot migrate to the sea, breed in inland rivers and lakes.