PLATE LIII. 
lorsqu’on touclie en meine temps les deux organes en dessus ou 
dessous, mais qu’il y en a toujours, une lorsqu’on etablit une com- 
munication entre le dos, et le ventre ; 5o, que la peau et les nageoires 
servent de conducteurs, quoique plus foiblement que le fer.” 
The benumbing faculties of this animal, when exerted to the ut- 
most, are neither so powerful, nor so terrible, as the ignorant in early 
times were taught to conceive. In the warmth of an invigoiated 
imagination, their poets feigned that vessels in full sail might be 
arrested in their progress through the briny waves by its intervention 
only ; and that the astonished fishermen were oftentimes struck mo- 
tionless while hauling up their nets in which their lurking captive, 
the Torpedo, lay entangled. Oppian describes the power of its 
shock upon the angler in a similar manner. 
“ The hook’d Torpedo, with instinctive force, 
Calls all his magic from its secret source : 
Quick through the slender line and polish’d wand 
It darts, and tingles in th* offending hand. 
The palsied fisherman, in dumb surprise, 
Feels through his frame the chilling vapours rise : 
Drops the lost rod, and seems, in stiffening pain. 
Some frost-fix’d wanderer on the polar plain.” 
Shaw's T runs. 
But although the exaggerations of the ancients are not to be re- 
tained, we are not entirely to reject their evidence. The history of 
the animal is now better known ; the extent of its electric powers 
more fully ascertained ; and yet the assertions of the ancients in some 
particulars deserve credit. Pliny tells us, that the Totpedo, when 
