704 Marvels of the Universe 
tells us, a shock voluntarily, either in self-defence, or to kill prey, and that shock is painful. Of 
two specimens captured some years ago in the estuary of the Tees, the stomach of one was found 
to contain an eel weighing two pounds, and a flounder weighing one pound ; and of the other, a 
salmon weighing nearly five pounds, and in no case was there mark or blemish of any kind found in 
the victim’s body. 
The curious and ugly fish known as the Electric Star-gazer, like the Torpedo, has the 
electric organs one on either side of the head behind the eye, and it seems that they have come 
into being by the transformation of some of the muscles of the eyeball. Each contains no less 
than one hundred and fifty layers of electric plates, or ‘‘ electro-plaxes,” piled up horizontally, in 
series. The controlling nerves lie in the upper part of each layer, the blood-vessels in the lower part. 
But there are fishes living within our gates, so to speak, which also possess electric organs ; 
they are the Skates. These organs can be found in the Common Skate, for example, if a section 
be cut through the body just in front of the back fin. In such a section the electric organs will 
HE EEEGERIC EEL. 
The discharges given off by this creature are sufficiently powerful to seriously inconvenience so large an animal as a horse. 
The battery extends along four-fifths of the whole body, and consists of two huge masses of cells filled with a jelly-like sub- 
stance and supplied with an infinite number of nerves. 
be found on either side of the backbone, as shown in our illustration. Unfortunately, however, 
for experimenters, the shocks which these fish give are very feeble. However, with more delicate 
instruments of research responses may perchance be obtained, which may materially enlarge our 
knowledge of this mysterious subject. 
There are one or two further points to which reference must be made. Firstly, the shock im- 
parted by an electric discharge increases with the number of electric plates included in the circuit. 
Thus in the Electric Eel the maximum shock is given when the body of the fish is so curved that the 
head and the tail are in contact with different points on the surface of some other fish. Secondly, 
the discharge may be reflex or voluntary. Repeated discharges induce fatigue and weaken 
the shocks. 
A IRL’ ANU IS IBOIRIN IN ANTS’ INJESICS 
BY HORACE DONISTHORPE, F.Z.S., F.E.S. 
Tus beautiful Fly, of which we give a photograph, is superficially very like a “ bumble” bee in 
appearance (though, of course, it only possesses two wings, instead of four, as in the latter), being 
clothed in a sort of pile of golden and metallic hairs. The female is of a more reddish colour, and 
