UNVERIFIED DEDUCTIONS. 183 



the Mormyrida of the Nile have removed the 

 objection based on the existence of structurally 

 perfect electric organs which do not give off 

 electric discharges. He showed that these deli- 

 cate little fishes, hitherto regarded as pseudo- 

 electric, are really capable of giving off shocks 

 that can be felt by the hand and can be easily 

 measured with instruments. He has also shown 

 that in these fishes a part of the organ is in 

 a state of transition from muscular to electric 

 tissue. At the posterior end the electric organ 

 is sharply set off from the muscular tissue; 

 but at the anterior end it graduates more or 

 less perfectly into the muscular tissue, and the 

 organ seems to be actually developing in that 

 direction. 



A special difficulty lay in the fact that in 

 MalapteruruS) an African fish, in which the 

 electric organ lies beneath the skin and encases 

 the body like a sheath, the electric current does 

 not obey the Pacinian law, but takes the oppo- 

 site direction. Fritsch removed the whole diffi- 

 culty by giving reasons for the belief that in 

 this case the organ is not of muscular but of 

 cutaneous origin, and represents the cutaneous 

 glands that are so plentiful in some parts of 

 the body. Such an exception, without the ex- 

 planation of Fritsch, would confuse the whole 



