TROWBRIDGE. — HIGH ELECTROMOTIVE FORCE. l'O 
diffusion in the cells. Each period of exhaustion is followed by a period of recujx ra 
tion ; and one is strongly reminded of the aetion of tin; electrical eel, <>r the rceupera- 
tion of human nervous force. 
My experience with the mechanism necessary to eliarge and discharge storugi 
cells leads me to remark that to the electrician the physiological theory of eh trical 
currents in muscles and nerves is incomprehensible and not in touch witli any phe- 
nomena exhibited by voltaic batteries or electrical machines ; for a collection of muscles 
or nerves, which are apparently homogeneous in matter, or at lea t do not show 
marked differences in chemical constitution, can produce, it is said, an electric spark 
and shocks of considerable severity. If there exists in the separate muscles a source 
of electricity, in other words a difference of potential, what is the mechanism by 
means of which the muscles can be discharged in -cries ? for the electromotive force 
of each muscle must be exceedingly low, and the high electromotive force of the 
electrical eel must be obtained by some mechanism which enables the animal to throw 
the effect of each muscle in series with the neighboring muscles. We cannot suppose 
that we have in these animals, which exhibit such marked electrical energy, a phe- 
nomenon like that shown in a thunder cloud. Meteorological observations lead us to 
conclude that the lightning discharge is not produced like the discharge horn a gr.;it 
umber of storage cells arrang 
that is, from one charged vesicle of 
vapor to another, — but rather from the accumulation in series of -uch charges at 
it on the surface of the cloud, the cloud thus acting like a charged cond 
point on 
We can thus suppose that the outer layer of vesicles of water are more heavily 
charged than those in the interior of the cloud. To suppose that there is any dis- 
charge in the heavens analogous to the discharge of a storage battery arranged in 
series, or, to go to physiology for a parallel, to suppose that there is a mechanism in 
the clouds similar to the arrangement of muscles or nerves in the electrical eel which 
n 
permits by means of insulating sheaths the accumulation of charg , is to suppose 
beyond 
of the electrician. In short, the theory of 
order to be accepted by th 
theory which suppose 
each muscle is like a unit of a storage battery, and that these units are th 
of the electrical fi 
show how, by an arrangement of 
pling is possi 
The electrician too notices, even in recent books on the nervous syst m, an 
account of experiments to detect the induction of a stimulated nerve on a neigh- 
boring nerve. The account of such endeavors often immediately follows statement 
that The velocity of the nerve action is hardly one hundred feet per second. The 
