ELECTRICAL ANIMALS. 
747 
they quit him. Upon the most careful inspection of such fish, I 
could never see any mark of teeth, or the least wound or scratch, on 
them. When the electrical fish are hungry, they are pretty keen 
after their food ; but they are soon satisfied, not being able to con- 
tain much at one time. An electrical fish, of three feet and upwards 
in length, cannot swallow a small fish above two, or at most three 
inches and a half long. 1 have been told that some of these have 
been found in Surinam river upwards of twenty-two feet long, whose 
stroke or shock proves instant death to any person that unluckily 
receives sit.” 
Mr. Firmin, in his Natural History of Surinam, published in 1765, 
tells us, that one cannot touch this electric fish with the hands, or 
even with a stick, without feeling a horrible numbness in the arms 
up to the shoulders ; and he further relates, that, making fourteen 
persons grasp each other by the hands, while he grasped the hands 
of the last with one of his, and with the other touched the eel with 
a stick, the whole number felt so violent a shock, that he could not 
prevail on them to repeat the experiment. 
Mr. Vanderbott, in two letters from Essequibo, written in the year 
1761, mentions two species, the black and the reddish ; though he 
acknowledges that, excepting the difference of colour and degree of 
strength, they are not materially different. In most experiments 
with these animals, he remarked a surprising resemblance between 
them and an electrical apparatus ; nay, he observed, that the shock 
was given to the finger of a person held at some distance from the 
bubble of the air formed by the fish w'hen it came to the surface of 
the water to breathe, and he concluded that at such times the elec- 
trical matter was discharged from its lungs. He mentions another 
characterizing circumstance, which is, that though metals in general 
were conductors of its electric property, yet some were found to be 
sensibly better than others for that purpose. Of this property Dr. 
Priestley takes notice, and says that a gold ring is preferable to any 
thing else. The same is likewise observed by Linneens. Dr. Priestley 
adds, that the sensation is strongest when the fish is in motion, 
and is transmitted to a great distance; so, if persons in a ship happen 
to dip their fingers or feet in the sea, when the fish is swimming at 
the distance of fifteen feet from them, they are affected by it. He 
also tells us, that the gymnotus itself, notwithstanding all its electric 
powers, is killed by the lobster. 
The astonishing property of the torpedo in giving a violent shock 
to the person who takes it in his hands, or who treads upon it, was 
long an object of wonder. For some time it was in general reckoned 
to be entirely fabulous ; but at last the matter of fact being ascer- 
tained beyond a doubt, philosophers endeavoured to find out the 
cause. M. Reaumur accounted for it by the action of a vast num- 
ber of minute muscles, which by their accumulated force gave a sudden 
and violent stroke to the person wdio touched it. But solutions of 
this kind were quite unsatisfactory, because the stroke was found to 
be communicated through w'ater, iron, wood, &c. 
When the phenomena of electricity began to be better known, it 
was then suspected that the shock of the torpedo was occasioned by 
