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Updated: June 13, 2025
See Botanic Garden, p. 1. Canto I. 1. 202, note on Gymnotus.
Then could the Tory, delivering at the right season the Shakesperian 'This England... and Byronic 'The inviolate Island... shake the frame, as though smiting it with the tail of the gymnotus electricus.
The gymnotus is neither a charged conductor, nor a battery, nor an electromotive apparatus, the shock of which is received every time they are touched with one hand, or when both hands are applied to form a conducting circle between the opposite poles.
In the same manner, when one insulated person holds the tail of a vigorous gymnotus, and another pinches the gills or pectoral fin, it is often the first only by whom the shock is received. It did not appear to us that these differences could be attributed to the dryness or moisture of our hands, or to their unequal conducting power.
The gymnotus being immersed in water, I placed my hand, both armed and unarmed with metal, within a very small distance from the electric organs; yet the strata of water transmitted no shock, while M. Bonpland irritated the animal strongly by an immediate contact, and received some very violent shocks.
"But what are they like, Gaspar? I've never seen one." It is Ludwig who still interrogates; but to his last question Cypriano, not Gaspar, gives the answer, saying: "Oh, cousin! Do you mean to say you've never seen an electric eel?" "Indeed do I. I've heard father speak of them often, and I know them by their scientific name, gymnotus.
I do not remember having ever received from the discharge of a large Leyden jar, a more dreadful shock than that which I experienced by imprudently placing both my feet on a gymnotus just taken out of the water. I was affected during the rest of the day with a violent pain in the knees, and in almost every joint.
A fellow is n't all battery, is he? The idea that a Gymnotus can't swallow his worm without a coruscation of animal lightning is hard on that brilliant but sensational being. Good talk is not a matter of will at all; it depends you know we are all half-materialists nowadays on a certain amount of active congestion of the brain, and that comes when it is ready, and not before.
We then observed nothing that indicated an action at a distance; but our gymnotus, recently taken, was not yet sufficiently tame to attack and devour frogs. On approaching the finger, or the metallic points, very close to the electric organs, no shock was felt.
It ate meat, and terribly frightened the little tortoises and frogs which, not aware of their danger, placed themselves on its back. The frogs did not receive the stroke till the moment when they touched the body of the gymnotus. When they recovered, they leaped out of the tub; and when replaced near the fish, they were frightened at the mere sight of it.
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