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Williamson at Philadelphia, Garden in Carolina, Walsh and 

 Pringle in London, investigated the source and nature of this 

 astonishing power ; but it is more especially to Baron Hum- 

 boldt that we are indebted for the most interesting and valu- 

 able details concerning this extraordinary animal, which, we 

 may remark, by the way, has been twice brought alive into 

 Europe. 



If the electric eel be touched with one hand, no commotion 

 is felt, or at least the shock is extremely feeble, whereas it 

 becomes extremely violent when both hands are applied at a 

 tolerable distance from each other. We find here an action 

 precisely analogous to that which is produced by the electric 

 battery. 



According to M. de Humboldt, the commotions which he 

 received from the gymnotus, surpassed in strength the most 

 painful electrical shocks which he ever remembers to have 

 received from a large Leyden phial completely charged. 

 He, therefore, thinks that there was no exaggeration in the 

 account of the Indians, who assured him that swimmers are 

 frequently drowned when attacked by one of these animals 

 in the leg or arm. A discharge so violent, he says, is fully 

 capable of depriving a man, for many minutes, of the use of 

 his limbs. Having placed his two feet on a gymnotus which 

 had just been brought out of the water, he received a most 

 terrific shock, and felt for the rest of the day, a very severe 

 pain in the knees, and almost in all the articulations of the 

 body. 



Metals, water, moistened bodies, &c, are conductors of the 

 electric powers of the gymnotus, and this explains how a 

 person may be attacked by it in the middle of the waves, 

 though at a considerable distance from the animal, and how, 

 at about fifteen feet off, the smaller fish are immediate] v 

 struck with death. 



As is the case with the torpedo, the sort of segment of a 



