5ti8 



THE ELECTRIC EEL. 



The Electric Eel {Gyynnotus electricus). 



below. It often attains to a very great size, measuring ten feet in 

 length and weighing more than one hundred pounds. 



The Electric Eel is even more remarkable for its capability of 

 delivering powerful electric shocks than the torpedo, but, as it is never 

 found in the British seas, it is not so well know^n as that fish. 



The Electric Eel is a native of Southern America, and inhabits the 

 rivers of that warm and verdant country/* The organs which enable 



it to produce such 

 wonderful effects 

 are double, and 

 lie along the 

 body, the one 

 upon the other. 

 In the native 

 country of these 

 fishes they are 

 captured by an 

 ingenious but 

 somewhat cruel 

 process. A num- 

 ber of wild horses 

 are driven to the 



spot and urged into the w^ater. The alarmed Gymnoti, finding their 

 domains thus invaded, call forth all the terrors of their invisible ar- 

 tillery to repel the intruders, and discharge their pent-up lightnings 

 with fearful rapidity and force. Gliding under the bellies of the 

 frightened horses, they press themselves against their bodies, as if to 

 economize all the electrical fluid, and by shock after shock generally 

 succeed in drowning several of the poor quadrupeds. 



Horses, however, are of but slight value in that country — hardly, 

 indeed, so much valued as pigeons in England — and as fast as they 

 emerge from the water in frantic terror are driven back among their 

 dread enemies. Presently the shocks become less powerful, for the 

 (Jymnotus soon exhausts its store of electricity, and when the fishes 

 are thoroughly fatigued they are captured with impunity by the native 

 liunters. A most interesting account of this process is given by 

 Humboldt, but is too long to be inserted in these pages. 



Several of these wonderful fish have been brought to England in a 

 living state, and there was a fine Gymnotus in the Polytechnic Institu- 

 tion. Numbers of experimenters were accustomed dailv to test its 

 powers, and the fatal, or at all events the numbing, power of the stroke 

 was evident when the creature was supplied with the fish on which it 

 fed. Though blind, it was accustomed to turn its head toward the 

 t^pot designated by the splashing of the attendant's finger, and as soon 



