ELECTEIC FISHES. 17 



has denied to other animals, but the materials called organic 

 are still the same, it is merely by the arrangement of a few 

 materials that Nature accomplishes so much. ' 



The existence of electric fishes was known to the ancients, as 

 we call the Romans and the Greeks. Pliny, who collected so 

 much curious nonsense, so many false facts, so many hypotheses 

 which he mistook [for facts, knew this fact : viz. that electric 

 fishes exist, and he records it. He knew, also, that people em- 

 ployed the torpedo in the treatment of rheumatism and paralysis ; 

 but whilst men are always apt enough to find out some utili- 

 tarian application of natural phenomena, no one thought of 

 inquiring into the cause of the phenomenon. Verily, I have but 

 a poor opinion of applicative genius the only kind of genius 

 possessed, it is said, by the Saxon race. It invents nothing, it 

 merely applies. If such had been the character of the genius of 

 Galileo, Torricelli, Volta, Newton, and Hunter, we should havt 

 been now mere recorders of facts and falsehoods, and of their 

 " ingenious applications." That some fishes have electric powers 

 was not enough for Hunter: he desired to know the cause 

 thereof, and he left us his " Inquiry into the Electric Organs of 

 the Surinam Eel," a model for all inquirers, though unfortu- 

 nately it led to no physiological results. Industry, ever on the 

 look-out to turn the penny, is no doubt a good thing. It lays 

 the foundation for national, and occasionally for individual, 

 wealth. By it, nations rise in the scale of civilization indirectly, 

 it is true, but still they rise, slowly, surely. But industry requires 

 no stimulus, no incentive, no such prizes and laudation, as the 

 "model nation" seems to think, at present. All men are quick 

 enough to turn the inventions of others to account : all Saxon men, 

 I mean for the Celt is hopeless. Yet he also is industrious, in 

 his own way, in the acquisition of wealth : he aims at acquiring 

 it by the sword. England and Holland boast of their wealth 

 acquired by patient industry ; I partly doubt it. India and 

 the Indies were not acquired by patient industry. But to return 

 to the Esk. 



Industry is a great thing, a material fact, but genius is 

 greater. In what time Greece, by her " patient industry," would 

 have sculptured the Venus and Apollo, composed " Euclid," the 



c 



