ON SYMPATHY AND FASCINATION, 



Throws, to th' offending arm, his stern control, 

 The palsied fisherman, 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 naturahsts of modern times who contend that the torpedo 

 is able to throw his benumbing influence to this extent, and in this manner. 

 This influence, moreover, is altogether voluntary ; and hence thie animal 

 will sometimes allow himself to be touched without exerting it. He occa- 

 sionally 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 material over him ; and in this state he is said to inflict at 

 times, even through the sand that covers him, a torpor so severe ^s to throw 

 down the astonished passenger that is inadvertently walking over it. 



We now know something of the medium through which this animal 

 operates, and have no difliculty in referring it to an electric or Voltaic aura, 

 and can even trace a kind of Voltaic apparatus in its structure. Yet, be- 

 fore the laws or power of electricity or voltaism were known, and, conse- 

 quentlyi before the medium by which they act was followed up, which 

 to this hour however, is only know by its results, (for it has never been 

 detected as an object of sense,) it is not to be wondered at that so mys- 

 terious an energy, operating or ceasing to operate at the option of the 

 animal, and occasionally operating at a distance from the individual aflTect- 

 ed, 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 eflfective 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 

 torpor, whence, indeed, its name, produced by small but incessant vibrations 

 of Voltaism, seldom, excepting in severe cases, amounting to the aggrega- 

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

 to it a greater multitude of weak strokes, rapidly repeated from a small bat- 

 tery or Leyden phial. Yet even the peculiar properties of the gymnote 

 were received with the greatest skepticism for nearly a century after their 

 first discovery : 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 professor^ 

 sent out by the Academy to conduct certain mathematical observations in 

 Cayenne ; but were not generally 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 afterwards. 



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 an- 

 other animal, but to convey them, as we have just observed that the tor- 

 pedo is said to do, though upon doubtful testimony, through long rods or 

 poles. It is highly probable, however, that such poles must first be wet- 

 ted with water ; for both the gymnoto and the Jorpedo are found to be 

 limited to precisely the same conducting and non-conducting mediums a« 

 are met with in common electricity. 



* \Iieiit. f. 4ie. 



