malacoptl:rygji apodes. 549 



zone, are yet continually moistened by the influx of the sea, 

 or the overflowing of innumerable streams. There the earth 

 is prodigal of poisonous plants and pernicious animals, the 

 impure inhabitants of the inundated savannahs. Accord- 

 ingly, though in Surinam, in French Guiana, and in Peru, 

 this fish bears the name of eel, it strongly partakes of the 

 nature of the climate under which it is destined to exist. 

 From afar, it attacks and oversets both men and even the 

 most vigorous and most agile horses. It is the more redoubt- 

 able from its very energetic organs of motion, which, in an 

 instant transport it to its prey, or remove it from its enemies, 

 and it is thus enabled to make the most of its electric power, 

 and to spread death or stupor around it, as it were, with a 

 single shock. More terrible than the torpedo, it ceases to be 

 an object of fear, only with the cessation of its existence. 



The electric eel is very common in the small streams and 

 the pools, which are found here and there in the immense and 

 generally arid plains which separate the eastern bank of the 

 Orinoco from the Cordillera of the coast of Venezuela. 



There is an immense quantity of these fish in the environs 

 of the little town of Calabozo ; and near Uritucu, a route, 

 formerly very much frequented, has been abandoned in con- 

 sequence of them. It was necessary, in going this road, to 

 ford a stream, in which a number of mules were annually 

 drowned, being stunned by the electric shocks emitted by 

 these animals. 



The torporific faculty of this eel, or, to speak with more pro- 

 priety, electric gymnotus, which Muschenbroek and Priestly 

 have confounded with the torpedo, had been observed at 

 Cayenne as long ago as 1671, by the naturalist and astronomer 

 Richer; but it was not until long after that period that philo- 

 sophers and medical men attempted to penetrate into the 

 causes of the phenomenon. La Condamine and several 

 others threw some light upon the subject; and about 1773, 



