Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Same Observation Was Made
By M. Fahlberg At Stockholm.
That philosopher, however, has seen an
electric spark, as Walsh and Ingenhousz had before him, in London, by
placing the gymnotus in the air, and interrupting the conducting chain
by two gold leaves pasted upon glass, and a line distant from each
other.
No person, on the contrary, has ever perceived a spark issue
from the body of the fish itself. We irritated it for a long time
during the night, at Calabozo, in perfect darkness, without observing
any luminous appearance. Having placed four gymnoti, of unequal
strength, in such a manner as to receive the shocks of the most
vigorous fish by contact, that is to say, by touching only one of the
other fishes, I did not observe that these last were agitated at the
moment when the current passed their bodies. Perhaps the current did
not penetrate below the humid surface of the skin. We will not,
however, conclude from this, that the gymnoti are insensible to
electricity; and that they cannot fight with each other at the bottom
of the pools. Their nervous system must be subject to the same agents
as the nerves of other animals. I have indeed seen, that, on laying
open their nerves, they undergo muscular contractions at the mere
contact of two opposite metals; and M. Fahlberg, of Stockholm, found
that his gymnotus was convulsively agitated when placed in a copper
vessel, and feeble discharges from a Leyden jar passed through its
skin.
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