140 VIEWS OF NATURE. 



contact with each other, and solids are associated with 

 fluids. Wherever there is organization and life, there must 

 be electric tension, or, in other words, a voltaic pile must be 

 brought into play, as the experments of Nobili and Mat- 

 teucci, and more especially the late most admirable labours of 

 Emil Dubois, teach us. The last-named physicist has suc- 

 ceeded in " manifesting the presence of the electric muscular 

 current in living and wholly uninjured animal bodies :" he 

 shows that "the human body, through the medium of a cop- 

 per wire, can at will cause the magnetic needle at a distance 

 to deflect first in one direction and then in another."* I have 

 myself witnessed these movements produced at will, and have 

 thus unexpectedly seen much light thrown on phenomena, to 

 which I had laboriously and ardently devoted so many years of 

 my earlier life. 



(44) p. 19.-" The myth of Osiris and Typhon." 



Respecting the struggle of two human races, the Arabian 

 shepherd tribes of Lower Egypt and the cultivated agri- 

 cultural races of Upper Egypt; on the subject of the fair- 

 haired Prince Baby or Typhon, who founded Pelusium ; and 

 on the dark-complexioned Dionysos or Osiris; I would refer 

 to Zoega's older and almost universally discarded views as 

 set forth at p. 577 of his masterly work " De origine et usu 

 obeliscorum" 



(45) p. 19 " The boundaries of European semi- civilization" 



In the Capitania General de Caracas, as well as in all the 

 eastern part of America, the civilization formerly introduced 

 by Europeans is limited to the narrow strip of land which 

 skirts the shore. In Mexico, New Granada, and Quito on the*, 

 other hand, European civilization has penetrated for into the 

 interior of the country and advanced up to the ridges of the 

 Cordilleras. There existed already in the fifteenth century 

 an earlier stage of civilization among the inhabitants of the 

 last-named region. Wherever the Spaniards perceived this 

 culture they pursued its track, regardless whether the seat 

 of it was at a distance from the sea, or in its vicinity. The 

 ancient cities were enlarged and their former significant 



* Untersuchungen uber thierische Electricitat, von Emil du Bois- 

 Raymond, 1848, bd. i. s. xv. 



