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most defenceless inhabitants of the deep, and, as its 

 motions are slow, it would become an easy prey to 

 fishes of more activity and better armed. It may be, 

 too, that this power is exerted in benumbing the prey 

 of the fish, in order that it may be more easily otp- 

 tured, though this is a little more doubtful than the 

 hypothesis of a defence. At all events, those electric 

 fishes do not always direct their discharges against 

 what may be considered as their natural prey. Gym- 

 noti certainly do not eat horses as their natural food 

 in the pools and slow-creeping streams where they 

 have their sluggish dwellings ; yet Humboldt men- 

 tions, and describes in his usual graphic manner, a 

 battle between horses and Gymnoti in a large pond 

 in South America. On that occasion the horses 

 were unquestionably the aggressors, though involun- 

 tary ones, and they were put to the rout, though the 

 Gymnoti were much exhausted by the effort. We 

 trunk that Mr. Couch's notion of the electric action 

 being a sort of cookery is far more unlikely and un- 

 tenable than this. Cooking is so exclusively the 

 privilege of the human race, that it has been pro- 

 posed to distinguish man, considered as a mere animal, 

 by the appellation of the " cooking animal ;" and we 

 should be sorry for the sake of those (and they are 

 not few), who have little human distinction, except 

 their love of cookery, to deprive them of their soli- 

 tary privilege, by allowing " a cold long-winded native 

 of the deep" to share it along with them. We do 

 think, therefore, that Mr. Couch must give up the 

 idea of the cooking ; and we have a more weighty 

 reason for this than the depriving of our gastronomes 

 of a portion of their privilege, in order to bestow it 

 upon a fish, of which they cannot even have the 

 luxury of making a delicious meal irt return'. The 

 flesh of the torpedo is, we believe, eatable, but it is 

 no bonne bouchc. The objection which we have to Mr. 

 Couch's hypothesis is the avowed confounding of the 

 electricity of the living animal with the electricity 

 of dead matter ; and it this which involves a grand 

 physiological error, which goes much farther, and 

 works more seriously, not only upon the physiology 

 of animal life, but upon the intellectual physiology ol 

 man, than those who have not followed out the train 

 of connexion would readily suppose. That he does 

 identify thenr is proved by his appending, as a note, 

 that " the bodies of animals killed by lightning do nol 

 become stiff;" and we have already endeavoured to 

 show, that though the original action may be exactly 

 the same in these, and in all other cases, the modi- 

 fication is very different. We are ready to admit that 

 considered abstractedly in itself, all action of matter 

 may be the same : but it is fully as certain that every 

 instance of action which can come before us in its 

 results, and it is only in these that it can come before 

 us, takes its particular character from the particular 

 kind of matter, or organisation of matter, in which, as 

 an instrument of action, the result becomes apparent 

 to our senses. 



The true doctrine, therefore, appears to be, that 

 the principle is one, and the modifications of that 

 principle many. This is very obviously the case in 

 substantive matter, where all the differences that we 

 meet with seem to be modifications. Experiment 

 shows that they actually are so in all cases to which 

 we can extend our analysis ; and that we have not 

 demonstration in every case is obviously owing to the 

 imperfection of our analysis, rather than to any thing 

 analysible in nature itself. There is no probability 



that we shall ever, by any refinement in chemistry 

 arrive at the ultimate atom of matter, that is, at 

 matter which we can pronounce to be absolutely 

 simple. Nor need we expect this, for it is the same 

 with every thing which can become the subject of 

 thought : we can see a portion of the middle, as much 

 of it as is necessary for all practical purposes ; but 

 we can see neither the beginning nor the end. This 

 is true in the simplest of all subjects time, space, 

 and number ; and if we find ourselves unequal to the 

 full understanding of these, we cannot hope to under- 

 stand better the more nice and complicated subjects 

 of the modifications of matter, and of 1 action as dis- 

 played in matter. 



But, though our knowledge is limited, it is our own 

 fault if it is not free from error so far as it goes ; and 

 though we cannot understand the whole of any one 

 subject, that is surely no good reason why we should 

 confound one subject with another. 



Yet this confounding is very often practised ; and 

 it is more practised by naturalists, especially those 

 microscopic naturalists who investigate the precise 

 minutiae of the production of nature, than by any 

 other class of persons whatever. This is so generally 

 the case, that every minute observer and precise 

 describer of details is almost a synonym for a bad 

 philosopher ; and the man who shows us most clearly 

 the individual beauties of nature is the veYy man 

 who destroys the beauty of the system, and severs 

 the connexion between Nature and Nature's Author. 

 The remark of Mr. Couch on the electricity or gal- 

 vanism of the torpedo belongs to the class of errors 

 of which we have been treating ; and this is the 

 reason why we have endeavoured to explain the true 

 philosophy of the subject. We shall nqw pass to 

 some examples of another section of the ray family 

 the rays, or skate, properly so called which are the 

 most useful to man, and for that reason the most 

 interesting of the whole. 



These are numerous in species, and most of the 

 species are abundant in one part of the sea or an- 

 other. They all have the rhomboidal form of the 

 body, and the muzzle more or less pointed, advancing 

 far in front of the eyes on the dorsal aspect, and of 

 the mouth and nostrils on the ventral. There is not 

 the slightest external distinction of head, neck, and 

 body, the whole appearing a flat rhomboidal disc, 

 with a long and slender tail at one of the angles. 

 The tail, from the peculiarity of its form, and the 

 smallness of the fins upon it, or their total absence, 

 can be of little or no use in swimming, either in for- 

 ward motion or in changing the direction. The. pec- 

 toral fins may, therefore, be considered as the sole 

 organ of motion in the true rays, and in this they 

 differ from every other kind of fishes, as in all the 

 others the grand organ is the caudal fin, or where 

 the body is elongated, and that is small or wanting, 

 the flexures of the body. When a skate is swimming 

 at its ease and undisturbed, its motion is peculiarly 

 smooth and gliding, and puts one more in mind of a 

 kite sailing along with motiorileis wings, than any 

 other motion which we are accustomed to see. There 

 are no doubt constant flexures in the pectoral fins, 

 but these are done so neatly and easily, that the fish 

 appears to slide along without the slightest effort. 



In this the skate form a striking contrast to the 

 flounders, and it is one which is worth attending to, 

 as showing how particular parts of the bodies of ani- 

 mals act, whatever may be their form in the indi- 



