64 BRITISH ASSOCIATION TOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



which it -was regarded. " It might reasonably be expected," says Sir J. Gardner 

 Wilkinson, "that the rc^d, or electric fish of the Nile, would be one of the most 

 sacred, and forbidden for food; and it seems not to be re^Dresented among those 

 caught in the ancient fishing scenes." He adds regarding the raad : — " It is a 

 small fish, and the one I saw measured little more than a foot long by four inches 

 in depth, but it had the power of giving a very strong shock. It is the 

 3Ielapterurus eleetricus, and may have been the ancient Latus." Thus far 

 Egyptian antiquity is silent as to the very existence of an .electric fish ; but the 

 name by which the malapterurus is known to the modern Egyptians, has been re- 

 ferred to as proving that their predecessors had more or less precisely ascertained 

 that the same force which is present iu the thunder-cloud is present ir. the shock- 

 giving fish. If this view is well founded, it is difficult to say how remote the 

 period is to which we must carry back the corameaeement of electrical science, if 

 not also of electrical art. Mr, Murray embodies the questionable view of this 

 subject in the statement, "the silurus of whieli we have to speak is the silurus of 

 the Nile {Malapterurus eleetricus), called raasch, or thunder-fish, by the Arabs." 



Wilkinson, referring to the same subject, says, "the name raad 'thuuder'is 

 very remarkable, since the modern Egyptians are quite ignorant of its peculiar 

 powers ; and if it was borrowed by them from their predecessors, the question 

 naturally arises, were they acquainted with electricity ?" The author pi-obably 

 intends here by "predecessors," the more ancient Egyptians, on whose customs 

 and character he has thrown so much light. As the word raad, however, is 

 Arabic, its origin, though ancient, may be much later than the latest of the 

 Pharaohs. Assuming, apparently, this view, Alexander Von Humboldt asks, 

 " did an ingenious and lively people, the Arabians, guess from remote antiquity 

 that the same force which inflames the vault of heaven in storms is the living and 

 invisible weapon of inhabitants of the waters ? It is said that the electric fish 

 of the Nile bears a name in Egypt that signifies thunder." It might be pleaded 

 in behalf of this view that the sagacious Arabian physician Averrhoes explicitly 

 affirmed of the torpedo, as Dr. Badham notices, that " the power which this fish 

 possesses of affecting _the skin, seems to be of a kind analogous to that by which 

 the magnet acts upon steel," and would have extended this explanation to the 

 silurus. To what extent, however, this ambiguous utterance is to be understood 

 as implying the discovery by Averrhoes of the bond which modern science has 

 shown to unite electricity and magnetism, and the expression by himself or his 

 countrymen of this truth iu the name given to the silurus, it is needless to inquire, , 

 till we have disposed of the philological question, does the word raad really sig- 

 nify thunder-fish ? The reply must be in the negative. Humboldt himself became 

 satisfied of this, and states in a note to the passage already quoted, "It appears 

 however that a distinction is to be made between ro.hd, thunder, and rahadh, the 

 electrical fish ; and that this latter word means simply ' that which causes trem- 

 bling.' " 



The question is one which only Arabic scholars can answer, and I have accord- 

 ingly referred it to Mr. Edward Stanley Poole, a learned Orientalist, whose de- 

 cisive reply I give in full : — "I fear the electric fish of the Mle will not sustain 

 the credit of my ancient Egyptian friends for scientific knowledge. The Arabic 

 appellation of the fish in question, namely raa'cid^ is certainly given to it on account 

 of its causing trembling. This is sufficiently plain, from a comparison of words 

 from the same root ; and is expressly asserted in an excellent Arabic work, ' Ab- 



