eigenmann: the FRESHWATER FISHES OF BRITISH GUIANA 45 



" I envied him, but too soon, for just then I got a good shock from ankle to knee and I jumped 

 and yelled, not so much from pain as from the unexpectedness of the shock. 



" We found we had five eels in the net, the largest three feet long, and it took maneuvering to 

 get them into the buckets. I received several more slight shocks before it was accomplished. 



" We rested in the afternoon, so as to be ready to go out at night. It is scarcely possible to 

 catch anything in the river in daytime. We were simply looking about to see where we could haul 

 at night. In crossing the river at night I think our boat struck half the sunken rocks, until I in- 

 sisted that the water be baled out before we risked another shock. On the sand-bank across from 

 the lower landing we caught two more electric eels in a net well filled with fishes. It was surprising 

 how soon everything became quiet in the flopping netful of fishes with such customers in their 

 midst. I opened one of the eels and found small fishes in its stomach. I put a twig through the 

 gill of the largest eel, for we proposed to eat it; the other eel we wanted to take home alive to see 

 some sport, and I placed it in a live-net. I had the eel in one hand, and in order to pick up the net 

 put the lantern in the same hand, but as soon as the lantern touched the eel I got a shock through the 

 handle. It was not a heavy shock, but I did not know how much heavier it might become, and so 

 gave up that way of managing. 



" When I came to pick up the net containing the other eel, I got another slight shock, and con- 

 cluded I needed help to carry them. We ate part of the largest; the electric organ was pasty 

 and the rest was so full of bones that we did not succeed with it. 14 



"Thursday morning Shideler went to fish above the falls preparatory to fishing at night. I 

 took care of the fishes, but by night we were both so tired we postponed the fishing till Friday night, 

 when we caught a seven pound luckananee, which, profiting by previous experience, we skinned and 

 ate. On one haul our net was again full of Hemidoras. These became so tangled up in the net 

 that it took an hour or more to get them out. One of them was new (Leptodoras linnelli)." 



On the 10th of October T went to Potaro Landing to make arrangements to 

 ascend to the Kaieteur. Mr. Shideler went up, the next day to watch some poison- 

 ing, but returned in the afternoon with Mr. Linnell, who had come down from 

 Holmia with a crew of Indians. 



Mr. Linnell, the representative of the Essequibo Exploring Company at 

 Holmia, and Mr. Bovallius, the representative at Tumatumari, after consultation, 

 lent me the crew of Indians which brought down Mr. Linnell, under the Indian 

 captain William Grant. They also placed their bateaux between Kangaruma and 



14 The "numb fish" early excited the interest of naturalists and thus directed attention to the fish- 

 fauna of the Guianas. The first notice of the fishes of the Essequibo was an account of the doings of the 

 electric eel, and in the second paper Bancroft attributed the shocks delivered by the electric eel to electricity. 

 Humboldt described how his assistants drove some horses into the water to exhaust the eels. It became 

 generally accepted that this was the usual method of fishing, although it is doubtful whether this method was 

 ever tried except on the occasion when Humboldt did it. 



A comprehensive account of the electric eel was published by Sachs as a result of a trip to Venezuela 

 for the special purpose of studying it. " Aus den Llanos," Leipzig, 1899, and " Untersuchungen am Zitteraal," 

 Leipzig, 1881. 



