[ 9S ] 
make on it in the water, to my own fatisfa^Uon. While 
I made thefe experiments, the eel was kept in a large 
veflel, fupported by pieces of dry timber, about three 
feet above the floor. Perhaps it may deferve notice, that 
a fmall hole being bored in the veffel in which the eel 
was fwimming, one perfon provoked the eel fo as to re- 
ceive a fliock ; another perfon at the fame time, not in 
contadt with him, but holding his finger in the flream 
that fpouted from the veffel, received a fliock alfo in that 
finger. From this and fundry other experiments, I am 
induced to believe, that the gymnotus has powers greatly 
fuperior to, or rather different from, thofe of the tor- 
pedo^ which you have examined with fo much atten- 
tion. I have the honour to be, sir, 
Your moft obedient 
and very humble fervant, 
HUGH WILLIAMSON. 
Philadelphia, Sept. 3, 1773. 
SOME weeks ago, a fea-faring man brought to this 
city a large eel, that had been caught in the province of 
Guiana, a little to the weftward of Surinam. It had the 
extraordinary power of communicating a painful fenfa- 
tion, like that of an eledtrical fhock, to people who 
touched it, and of killing its prey at a diftance. As I 
have not heard that any other eel of this kind has ever 
been carried to any of our continental colonies, or that 
any 
