GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 359 
was observed spinning cotton for nets ; the herbaceous cot- 
ton plant growing every where wild. In some places the 
fish were caught in pots; in others they took them by means 
of a poisonous plant. 
A fish resembling the Silurus electricus was brought on 
board the Congo from Embomma, which, by the account 
of the natives, when alive and touched, communicates a 
severe shock to the hand and arm, or to use their own ex- 
pression “ it shoot through all the arm.” It is thus descri- 
bed by Mr. M‘Kerrow: length three-feet six inches ; head 
large, broad and compressed ; mouth furnished with six 
long cirrhi, four on the under and two on the upper jaw; 
mandibles dentated ; tongue short, and eyes small; body 
without scales ; pectoral fins near the branchial openings, 
the ventrals near the anus ; dorsal fin soft, and placed near 
the tail; upper parts of the body thickly spotted black, 
and the under of a yellowish white ; skin exceedingly thick. 
The Zaire swarms with those huge monsters the hippo- 
potamus and the alligator, orrather crocodile, (for it appears 
to be of the same species as the animal of the Nile,) and 
particularly above the narrows. Both these animals seem to 
be gregarious, the former being generally met with in groups 
of ten or twelve together ; the latter in two or three, sometimes 
five or six. The flesh of the hippopotamus is excellent food, 
not unlike pork ; but it does not appear that the negroes are 
particularly fond of it, as the only one killed by the present 
party was suffered to putrify on the margin of the river ; 
though it is stated that the flesh is sometimes sold in the 
market. One crocodile only was killed, whose length was 
