i;o CLUES AND SUGGESTIONS CHAP. 



singular cases are nothing but extra- 

 ordinary developments of the ordinary 

 but exhaustless resources stored in the 

 original germs of all living structures. 

 Very special, very wonderful, and very 

 rare as electric organs undoubtedly are, 

 they do not stand alone in any one 

 species. They exist in fishes of widely 

 separated genera. Moreover, it has only 

 been lately discovered that they exist in 

 a rudimentary condition, quite divorced 

 as yet from functional activity, in many 

 species of the Rays, our own common 

 Skates being included in the list. Nay, 

 farther, it has long been known that in 

 all muscular action there is an electrical 

 discharge, so that the concentration of 

 the agency in a specially adapted organ, 

 of which we have actual examples in 

 every stage of preparation, is almost 

 certainly nothing but the development, 

 or the turning to special account, of an 



