Chap. IV. ELECTRIC EELS. 291 



of a few yards, and had the appearance of having been 

 made by the hand of man. The smallest were about 

 two feet, the largest seven or eight feet in diameter. 

 As we approached the most considerable of the larger 

 ones, I was startled at seeing a number of large serpent- 

 like heads bobbing above the surface. They proved to 

 be those of electric eels, and it now occurred to me that 

 these round holes were made by these animals working 

 constantly round and round in the moist muddy soil. 

 Their depth (some of them were at least eight feet 

 deep) was doubtless due also to the movements of the 

 eels in the soft soil, and accounted for their not drying 

 up, in the fine season, with the rest of the creek. Thus, 

 whilst alligators and turtles in this great inundated 

 forest region retire to the larger pools during the dry 

 season, the electric eels make for themselves little ponds 

 in which to pass the season of drought. 



My companions now cut each a stout pole, and pro- 

 ceeded to eject the eels in order to get at the other fishes, 

 with which they had discovered the ponds to abound. 

 I amused them all very much by showing how the 

 electric shock from the eels could pass from one person 

 to another. We joined hands in a line whilst I touched 

 the biggest and freshest of the animals on the head with 

 the point of my hunting-knife. We found that this 

 experiment did not succeed more than three times with 

 the same eel when out of the water : for, the fourth time, 

 the shock was scarcely perceptible. All the fishes found 

 in the holes (besides the eels) belonged to one species, a 

 small kind of Acari, or Loricaria, a group whose members 

 have a complete bony integument. Lino and the boy 



