38 6 Mr. Home’s Hints on the Subject 
idea that the animal secretions may be produced by the same 
means. 
To prosecute this inquiry with every advantage, requires a 
knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and chemistry, rarely to 
be met with in the same person. I have therefore availed 
myself of the assistance of the different members of this 
Society, the object of which is the improvement of Animal 
Chemistry, their intimate acquaintance with these branches of 
science, renders them peculiarly fitted for such an under- 
taking. 
It is one of the most important subjects to which Mr. Davy’s 
discoveries can be applied, and he has given it the considera- 
tion it deserves. 
The Voltaic battery is met with in the torpedo and elec- 
trical eel, and although it is given only as a means of catching 
their prey, and defending themselves, and therefore not im- 
mediately applicable to the present inquiry, yet it furnishes 
two important facts, one, that a Voltaic battery can be formed 
in a living animal, the other, that nerves are essentially ne- 
cessary for its management ; for in these fish, the nerves 
connected with the electrical organs, exceed those that go 
to all the other parts of the fish, in the proportion of twenty 
to one. The nerves are made up of an infinite number of 
small fibres, a structure so different from that of the electric 
organ, that they are evidently not fitted to form a Voltaic 
battery of high power ; but their structure appears to Mr. 
Davy to adapt them to receive and preserve a small electrical 
power. 
That the nerves arranged with muscles, so as to form a 
Voltaic battery, have a power of accumulating and com mu- 
