Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 193 of 777 - First - Home
Electrical Fishes, When Very Vigorous, Act With Equal Energy Under
Water And In The Air.
This observation led us to examine the
conducting property of water; and we found that, when several persons
form
The chain between the superior and inferior surface of the organs
of the torpedo, the shock is felt only when these persons join hands.
The action is not intercepted if two persons, who support the torpedo
with their right hands, instead of taking one another by the left
hand, plunge each a metallic point into a drop of water placed on an
insulating substance. On substituting flame for the drop of water, the
communication is interrupted, and is only re-established, as in the
gymnotus, when the two points immediately touch each other in the
interior of the flame.
We are, doubtless, very far from having discovered all the secrets of
the electrical action of fishes which is modified by the influence of
the brain and the nerves; but the experiments we have just described
are sufficient to prove that these fishes act by a concealed
electricity, and by electromotive organs of a peculiar construction,
which are recharged with extreme rapidity. Volta admits that the
discharges of the opposite electricities in the torpedos and the
gymnoti are made by their own skin, and that when we touch them with
one hand only, or by means of a metallic point, we feel the effect of
a lateral shock, the electrical current not being directed solely the
shortest way.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 193 of 777
Words from 52313 to 52563
of 211397
