104 THEREIGNOF LAW. 



given without an exact fulfilment of all the laws 

 which govern Electricity, and which especially 

 govern its concentration and destructive force. 

 The Electric Ray, or Torpedo, has been pro- 

 vided with a battery closely resembling, but 

 greatly exceeding in the beauty and compact- 

 ness of its structure, the batteries whereby Man 

 has now learnt to make the laws of Electricity 

 subservient to his will. There are no less than 

 940 hexagonal columns in this battery, like 

 those of a bees' comb, and each of these 

 is subdivided by a series of horizontal plates 

 which appear to be analogous to the plates of 

 the voltaic pile. The whole is supplied with an 

 enormous amount of nervous matter — four great 

 branches of which are as large as the animal's 

 spinal cord, and these spread out in a multi- 

 tude of thread-like filaments round the prismatic 

 columns, and finally pass into all the cells.* This 

 again seems to suggest an analogy with the 

 arrangement by which an electric current, pass- 

 ing through a coil and round a magnet, is used 

 to intensify the magnetic force. A complete 

 * Owen's Lectures on Comp. Anat., vol. ii. (Fishes.) 



