THE ELECTRIC EEL 
5i 
with name erect and haggard eyes, raise themselves 
and endeavour to escape, but are driven back by the 
Indians. Within five minutes a couple of horses are 
killed. The eel, which is five feet long, presses its 
body against the belly of the horse, and attacks at 
once the heart, the viscera, and the group of abdomi- 
nal nerves. It is natural,’’ the author adds, “that the 
effect which a horse experiences should be more power- 
ful than that produced by the same fish on man, when 
it touches him only at one of the extremities. The 
horses are probably not killed, but stunned, and are 
drowned amid the confusion of the struggle between 
the other horses and eels.” 
The truth of Humboldt’s account of the taking 
of the electric eels is sometimes doubted. But apart 
from the credit due to the deliberate utterances of one 
of the greatest minds of modern days, the accuracy of 
whose views, even when he put them forward as mere 
probable surmise, is being constantly verified by later 
experience, the powers of the creatures, even of the 
small specimen brought to this country, are so aston- 
ishing as to make Humboldt’s account not err on the 
side of the marvellous. 
It would be difficult, unless the opportunity existed 
of taking a plunge into a tank large enough to swim 
in, and well stocked with electric eels, to realize by 
personal experience the precise effect of the shocks 
upon the horses ; but a record of the writer’s sensa- 
tions when in personal contact with these uncanny 
creatures may perhaps give some notion of the strength 
