458 LIVING TORPEDOS IN BERLIN. 



dead organ only shows weak relatively negative polarisation which 

 is equally strong in the two directions. The same fact is observed 

 in a preparation which has been boiled. The organ was no longer 

 fresh ; it had lain on ice for forty-eight hours, the air being of 

 a moderate summer temperature. The organ showed an alkaline 

 or neutral reaction to litmus paper, but after a sudden scalding and 

 boiling it became acid and turned the paper decidedly red. In this 

 respect therefore it manifested the same difference from muscle as 

 the organ of Malapterurus 1 .' The columns of the boiled organ 

 separated from one another at the slightest touch. In this con- 

 dition the preparation had lost every trace of organ current. 

 Before the boiling, the current of 30 Groves being closed for 5", 

 the relatively negative polarisation was so strong that the scale 

 disappeared from the field ; after the boiling only a trace in the 

 two directions resulted. Thus it looked very much as if the 

 resistance of the preparation had diminished, just as I found to be 

 the case in muscle and in the tissue of plants 2 , and as I had also 

 stated with regard to the organ of Malapterurus 3 . The current 

 strengths before and after boiling were in the proportion of about 

 100 to 133; but as in boiling some of the columns had been 

 separated the proportion was undoubtedly smaller. Whether the 

 dead organ, like dead muscle, conducts better than the fresh, 

 I could not determine, but it is very probable, on account of the 

 acid reaction which appears as the organ dies. 



13. Discussion of the foregoing Results. 



However incomplete the experiments above given as to the 

 secondary electromotive phenomena of the electrical organ may 



1 Archiv fur Anatomie, etc., 1859, P- 846. Gesammelte Abhandlungen, vol. ii. 

 pp. 178"., 646, 647. Untersuchungen, pp. 70-72. 



2 Comp. J. Ranke, Tetanus. Eine physiologische Studie, 1865, p. 16. Gesammelte 

 Abhandlungen, vol. ii. pp. 95, 1 1 8. 



3 Sitzungsberichte, 1883, vol. i. pp. 392, 398. By an error it is there stated that 

 a strip of Malapterurus organ has its resistance diminished by boiling, from loo to 42. 

 It ought to be, as above in the text, that the strength of the current is raised by 

 boiling in the proportion of 100 to 238. That the proportion of the current strengths 

 before and after boiling was less in the case of the Malapterurus than in that of the 

 Torpedo arose from the circumstance (in addition to that given in the text) that the 

 conducting vessels with club-shaped pads and films of albumen, then used for leading 

 off, had a smaller resistance than the conducting tubes with clay points which were 

 employed later. But for this very reason, this proportion, in the experiments on 

 Malapterurus, approached more nearly to the actual (reciprocal) proportion of the 

 resistances of the preparation. 



