Association for the Advancement of Science. 479 



ments made by the Association did not confirm tlie common be- 

 lief regarding the indefinite vitality of certain seeds, for instance, 

 the mummy seed. If any naturalist would suggest a better mode 

 of preserving the plants, it would be well to institute a new set of 

 experiments ; but as far as was at present known, the plan that 

 was adopted was the most likely to preserve their vitality. 



Professor George Wilson read a paper on the Employment of 

 the Living Electric Fishes as medical Shoclc Machines, of which 

 the following is an abstract : — The author, in prosecuting inquiries 

 into the early history of electrical machines, did not originally 

 contemplate going farther back than the seventeenth century, or 

 commencing with any earlier instrument than that of Otto Guer- 

 ick. His attention had been turned to the living torpedo as a 

 remedial agent, and he now felt satisfied that living electrical fish 

 were the most familiar and earliest electrical instruments employ- 

 ed by mankind. He adduced the testimony of Galen and others in 

 proof of the practice, and as proving that "shocks" had been used 

 as a remedy in paralytic aud neuralgic afi"ections before the Chris- 

 tian era. Still higher antiquity had been claimed for the electric 

 Silurus, on the supposition that its Arabic name, "Raad, " signi- 

 fied "Thunder Fish'" and implied the nature of the shock; but 

 the best Arabic scholars had shown that this was not the case. 

 In proof of the generality of the practice of employing zoo-elec- 

 trical machines, he alluded to the remedial application of the tor- 

 pedo by the Abyssinians — of the gymnotus by the South American 

 Indians, and the recently discovered electrical fish by the dweller, 

 on the Old Callabar River, which falls into the Bight of Benin. 

 The native women, he said, had a habit of keeping one or more 

 of those fishes in water, and of bathing their children therein 

 with the view of strengthening them by the shocks which they 

 received, which were very powerful. Having observed on the 

 proofs of the antiquity as well as generaUty of the practice under 

 notice, he concluded by directing the attention of naturalists to 

 the probability of additional kinds of electrical fishes being dis- 

 covered, and to the importance of obtaining the views of the na- 

 tives familiar with them in reference to the sources of their ther- 

 apeutic employment. 



Dr. Redfern read a Notice of a Simj^le Method of Applying 

 the Compound Microscope to the examination of the Contents of 

 Aquavivaria. He stated that he had for some time made use of 

 a very simple and convenient arrangement for examining objects 



