300 



TORPEDO RAY. 



sumed the two persons became liable to the shock. 

 These experiments have been varied many ways, 

 and repeated times without number, and they all 

 determined the choice of conductors to be the same 

 in the Torpedo as in the Leyden phial. The sen- 

 sations likewise, occasioned by the one and the 

 other in the human frame, are precisely similar. 

 Not only the shock, but the numbing sensation, 

 which the animal sometimes dispenses, expressed 

 in French by the words engourdissement and four- 

 milleinent, may be exactly imitated with the phial, 

 by means of Lane's electrometer : the regulating 

 rod of which, to produce the latter effect, must be 

 brought almost into contact with the prime con- 

 ductor which joins the phial. It is a singularity 

 that the Torpedo, when insulated, should be able to 

 give us, insulated likewise, forty or fifty successive 

 shocks from nearly the same part ; and these with 

 little, if any diminution of their force. Each effort 

 of the animal to give the shock is conveniently ac- 

 companied by a depression of his eyes, by which 

 even his attempts to give it to non-conductors can 

 be observed : in respect to the rest of his body he 

 is in a great degree motionless, though not entirely 

 so. I have taken no less than fifty of the above- 

 mentioned successive shocks from an insujated Tor- 

 pedo in the space of a minute and half. All our 

 experiments confirm that the electricity of the 

 Torpedo is condensed, in the instant of its ex- 

 plosion, by a sudden energy of the animal ; and as 

 there is no gradual accumulation, or retention of 

 it, as in case of charged glass, it is not at all sur- 



