ELECTRIC ORGAN OF THE SILURUS. 53 



xv.) Though Adanson, in the year 1756, 

 directed the attention of Naturalists to the extra- 

 ordinary power possessed by this fish, yet de- 

 tached notices concerning it existed centuries before 

 in the works of our earlier voyagers. In the year 

 1775, the Editors of the Papers of the eminent 

 Forskall gave a somewhat extended account of 

 it ; and M. Broussonnet, in a Memoir read to the 

 Academy of Sciences of Berlin, published in 1782, 

 supplied the first representation of the fish. It was 

 to M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, however, that we were 

 indebted for the first account of the electric organ, 

 and, with this, he supplied a fair representation of 

 the animal, in 1802. In 1824, Professor Rudol- 

 phi furnished an excellent memoir upon the subject 

 in the Berlin Transactions, in which some of the 

 internal parts were described; and M. Valenciennes 

 has now presented us with all that was required to 

 make the account complete. Of the six fishes which 

 constitute the present list of those possessed of this 

 singular power, the apparatus of two of them, 

 namely, the Torpedo and Gymnotus, has long since 

 been minutely explained, and we hail with plea- 

 sure this additional triumph of patient and success- 

 ful investigation. Dismissing all further chronolo- 

 gical details and criticism, we now supply a de- 

 scription of the organ, as accurate and succinct as 

 we can render it. 



The account of the outer aponeurotic membrane 

 we shall derive from that furnished by M. RudoJ- 

 phi, as being somewhat more precise than that of 



