377 



in all organized beings. 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 

 water ? It is asserted, that the electrical fish of 

 the Nile bears a name in Egypt, that signifies 

 thunder *. 



We left the town of Calabozo on the 24th of 

 March, highly satisfied with our abode, and the 

 experiments we had made on an object so worthy 

 of the attention of physiologists. I had besides 

 obtained some good observations of the stars; 

 and discovered with surprise, that the errors of 

 maps amounted here also to a quarter of a de- 

 gree of latitude. No person had taken an ob- 

 servation before me on this spot; and geo- 

 graphers, magnifying as usual the distance from 

 the coast to the islands, have carried back 

 beyond measure all the points toward the 

 South ^f, 



* AnnaL du Mus., vol. i, p. 398. It appears however, that 

 a distinction is to be made between rahd, thunder, and rahadd, 

 the electrical fish ; and that this latter word means simply 

 what causes trembling. Silv. de Sacy, in Abd-Allatif, p. 167. 



+ I found the latitude of Calabozo, which in the map of 

 Arrowsmith is called Calabaco, according to meridian alti- 

 tudes of Canopus, to be 8° 56' 8": and the longitude, by 

 the timekeeper adjusted at Caraccas, 70° 10' 40*, that is 

 0° 16' 56* East of Guacara. D'Anville places Calabozo in 

 8° 33'; La Cruz, in 8° 43'. See my Recueil d'Obs. AstK, 



