54 
THE ELECTRIC EEL 
electric organ, which lies on each side of the lower 
part of the tail, into direct contact. The eel, there- 
fore, swam past them, like a torpedo-boat which 
intends to discharge its broadside torpedoes, and as 
the battery came opposite, the fish gave a slight 
quiver, which instantaneously produced a violent 
shock in the gudgeon, and turned it belly upwards. 
After three had been killed and eaten, the shocks 
became weaker, and the other gudgeon seemed only 
partly paralyzed by the first shock, and sometimes 
recovered and swam away in a crippled condition until 
benumbed by a second shock. One fish which was 
“shocked” and left for dead while the eel went in 
pursuit of more, recovered after a few minutes, and 
was subsequently pursued, received a direct shock 
from the eel’s side, and was killed. The inference 
suggested by the writer’s own experience of the 
violence of the shocks inflicted, though with different 
degrees of intensity, is that the eel controls the power 
of the electrical discharge at will, just as it controls 
any other function which has its initiative in muscular 
action ; and that the gudgeons received enough, and 
no more, than was sufficient to paralyze them, and 
make them easy victims for the slow-moving eel. 
