VIII 



ELECTRIC ORGANS OF FISH 121 



This interpretation will, I suspect, hold good in many localities 

 where the origin of such spots was unknown. I thitik the plant 

 was a 7noss. But if so, very different from any existing moss, so 

 far as I know. The flower^ or what stands in the place of a 

 flower, a sort of leafy or fibrous capping to the spore-vessel, is 

 seen in only one specimen I have yet found. But the stalks^ 

 or branching stems, are all apparently tubular. In some cases 

 where the tube has been opened by the rupture of the upper 

 side, the internal wall exhibits a striated surface like a dried 

 vascular tissue. I am setting about making a regular collection. 



Tell Etteridge. Would he like to come down to see them ? 

 I should be delighted to see him. But I leave this to-morrow 

 for a few days, returning here on Wednesday next. If he could 

 come down to Greenock by the night train from London on 

 Tuesday, he could catch the steamer Lord of the Isks, by 

 which I return myself. It is the last day of that boat for the 

 season, and takes us here at 2 p.m. 



This discovery is an important one. It bears on a peculiar 

 form of primeval vegetable life and on the phenomena of meta- 

 morphism, which are so obscure. 



Professor Flower to the Duke of Argyll 



British Museum (Natural History), 



Cromwell Road, London, S.W., 



February 2, 1893. 



In the Museum of the College of Surgeons is a beautiful set 

 of models in wax of the electric organs of the torpedo, which 

 were made by order of one of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany for 

 Professor Owen while he was Conservator of the Museum, being, 

 I believe, exact copies of those you saw at Florence. I do not 

 know whether you have yet received Professor Ewart's memoir 

 on the electric organs of the skates ? It is just published in the 

 Philosophical Transactions. 



In Nature of January 19 there is an article by Gustav 

 Fritsch of Berlin on the electric organs of various fishes. These 

 all tend to show that these organs are modifications of some 

 other structures which existed previously in the animal, but how 



