ELECTRIC FISH 



with which it can be employed, we are apt to forget the 

 formidable qualities it still possesses. We are only 

 accidentally reminded of them when we read notices 

 regarding the risks of electrocution. But it keeps 

 those qualities, and sometimes they are revealed in 

 tragic fashion. Electricity has been humanized, but 

 it still remains the weapon of Jupiter tonans> the god 

 of antiquity, who manifested himself in thunder and 

 lightning. 



There was good reason for the name " torpedo- 

 women ". We produce electricity by using the re- 

 sources of inanimate nature, with the help of various 

 kinds of apparatus, batteries, dynamos, waterfalls, but 

 living nature has animals which can do as much, in and 

 by themselves. For this purpose they are provided 

 with specialized apparatus consisting of organs which 

 give off electricity in the course of their normal activity. 

 These creatures are not very numerous, but their very 

 scarceness makes them the more interesting. They 

 belong to all the groups of fishes. The commonest, and 

 those which have been longest known, are the torpedoes, 

 which form a particular family related to that of the 

 skates and rays. From their name and properties has 

 arisen the verbal assimilation which has passed into 

 ordinary language and, by derogation, into that of 

 ballistics. 



When, knowing the powers with which it is invested, 

 we look at a torpedo, we cannot help a feeling of some 

 surprise, so little does its placid appearance indicate 

 its capacity for giving off electricity. The fish is flat 

 like a skate, but thicker and rounder. Its body — the 

 head is fused with the trunk — has the form of a circular 

 disk terminated by a short but relatively thick tail. 

 Usually the creature lies flat and motionless on the 

 bottom. It seldom moves, and then only for a 

 short time. Its sleepy lethargic behaviour gives no 

 indication of the secret power it possesses. 



The torpedo is a sea fish. It lives on the muddy or 



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