LIVING TORPEDOS IN BERLIN. 



433 



was out of the water. He concluded from this circumstance that 

 only an inconsiderable portion of the shock goes through the body 

 of the fish, without taking into account that this might be the 

 case with a fish exposed to the air but need not be so with one 

 under water. In the air, the current in order to go through the 

 body must take its way along the thin, perhaps half dry, skin, and 

 it is not therefore surprising that a hand inside the body should 

 feel very little of it 1 . Meanwhile even under these circumstances 

 Boll succeeded with the Torpedo, following my procedure with 

 Malapterurus, in detecting the shock in the interior of the body 

 of the fish by means of wires insulated to the points 2 . 



The proof that the Torpedo-shock really penetrates the body of 

 the fish and attains a greater density than elsewhere in the brain 

 and spinal cord, and in the great nerve trunks, is not thereby 

 weakened. The currents, 

 which in the back flow 

 from the median borders 

 of the organ to the middle 

 line, and in the belly from 

 the middle line to those 

 borders, necessarily take 

 their course through the 

 brain and spinal cord, and 

 as this is the shortest path 

 between the most active 

 portions of both organs, 

 there exist no stronger cur- 

 rents in the Torpedo. As 

 in Malapterurus so here my assertion is confirmed, that the body 

 of the electric fish itself is more favourably placed for receiving 

 the shocks of its own organs than that of another creature in its 

 neighbourhood 3 . 



A glance at Fig. 15 makes this clearer, and also shows how in 

 consideration of the results we had obtained we needed to alter 

 Cavendish's diagram. The cross section represented, including 

 the columns which are only diagrammatically indicated, is drawn 

 strictly from nature. The first fact to notice is that the current 



1 Compare Untersuchungen, p. 128. 



2 Loc. cit. pp. 260, 261. 



3 Monatsberichte der Akademie, 1858, p. 107. 

 ii. p. 638. 



Ff 



Gesammelte Abhandlungen, vol. 



