236 



"ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION. 



length of the hook, line, and rod, to the arm of the angler, and hence by pal- 

 sying his arm, of effecting his escape. So Oppian in Greek verses, which I 

 will take leave thus to translate : — 



The liook'd torpedo, with instinctive force 

 Calls all his magic from Its secret source ; 

 And through the hook, the line, the taper pole, 

 Throws to th' offending arm his stern control. 

 The palsied fishermajfi, in dumb surprise, 

 Feels through his frame the chilling vapours rise, 

 ' Drops the vain rod, and seems, in stiffening pain, 



Some frost-fix'd wanderer o'er the icy plain. * 



There may, perhaps, be some exaggeration in this description ; but there are 

 not wanting naturalists of modern times who contend that the torpedo is able 

 to throw his benumbing influence to this extent and in this manner. This influ- 

 ence, moreover, is altogether voluntary ; and hence the animal will sometimes 

 allow himself to be touched without exerting it. He occasionally loiters on 

 the moist sands of the shore after the tide has retreated, burying himself 

 under the sand by a brisk flapping of his fins, which serves to fling this mate- 

 rial over him ; and inth^state he is said to inflict at times, even through the 

 sand that covers him, a torpor so severe as to throw down the astonished pas- 

 senger that is inadvertently walking over it. 



We now know something of the medium through which this animal ope- 

 rates, and have no difficulty in referring it to an electric or Voltaic aura, and 

 can even trace a kind of Voltaic apparatus in its structure. Yet, before the 

 laws or power of electricity or Voltaism were known, and, consequently, 

 before the medium by which they act was followed up, which to this hour, 

 however, is only known by its results (for it has never been detected as an 

 object of sense), it is not to be wondered at that so mysterious an energy, 

 operating or ceasing to operate at the option of the animal, and occasionally 

 operating at a distance from the individual aff"ected, should be regarded as a 

 species of magic or incantation. 



The Voltaic power of the electric eel or gymnote, is, however, more ob- 

 vious and eff'ective than that of the torpedo : the gymnote making a sudden 

 and concentrated assault by shocks, of less or greater violence, as though 

 from a more highly-charged battery; and the torpedo, by a numbness or tor- 

 por, whence, indeed, its name, produced by small but incessant vibrations of 

 Voltaism, seldom, excepting in severe cases, amounting to the aggregation 

 of shocks, and precisely similar to what is felt in a limb upon applying to it 

 a great multitude of weak strokes, rapidly repeated from a small battery or 

 Leyden phial. Yet even the peculiar properties of the gymnote were re- 

 ceived with the greatest skepticism for nearly a century after their first dis- 

 covery ; which, as this fish is almost exclusively a native of the warmer seas 

 and rivers of Africa and America, did not take place till the middle of the 

 seventeenth century. They were first pointed out to the French Academy in 

 1671, by M. Richer, one of the travelling professors sent out by the Academy 

 to conduct certain mathematical observations in Cayenne ; but were not gene- 

 rally credited till the concurrent experiments of M. Condamine, Mr. Ingram, 

 Mr. Gravesend, and other celebrated natural historians, set every doubt at 

 rest, about a century afterward. 



The more formidable power of the electric gymnote enables it, upon the 

 authority of almost every experimentist, to give not only severe shocks, both 

 in the water and out of the water, when in actual contact with another ani- 

 mal, but to convey them, as we have just observed that the torpedo is said to 

 do, though upon doubtful testimony, through long rods or poles. It is highly 

 probable, however, that such poles must first be wetted with water; for both 

 the gymnote and the torpedo are found to be limited to precisely the same con- 

 ducting and non-conducting mediums as are met with in common electricity. 



In these cases we trace something of the medium by which the irritable or 



* AlleiU. i. 412. 



