Another eel-like fish, formerly taken in great numbers, and of the finest
quality, but now almost forgotten, is also returning. This is the lampern.
Lamperns, unlike eels, come into the rivers to spawn, and go back to the
sea later or to the brackish waters. Men employed in scooping gravel out
of the river at Hammersmith, lately noticed numbers of lamperns coming up
on to the gravel-beds at low-water, and moving the gravel into little
hollows, previously to dropping their spawn. Twelve years ago the great
body of the migrating lamperns were all poisoned by the river, and lay in
tens of thousands in the mud at Blackwall Point. As they have now
succeeded in getting up to spawn, the shoals may be seen next year in
something like their old numbers. The flounders have not yet reappeared to
stay. Porpoises come up above London nearly every year. The first I saw
were two above Hammersmith Bridge early on that momentous May morning in
1886, when Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill was thrown out. I had been
up with a friend to hear the result of the division, and had seen the wild
joy which followed its announcement in the lobby, and then walked home at
dawn, and so met the early porpoises.
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