electrical eels.

The dread of the gymnoti, or electrical eels of South America, is so great among the Indians, that the offer of reward is unavailing to induce them to endeavour to procure some of them; though they pretend, by only chewing a little tobacco, they may venture to touch them with impunity.

"This fable, says M. de Humboldt, in his personal narrative of travels, "of the influence of tobacco on animal electricity, is as general on the continent of South America, as the belief among mariners of the effect of garlic and tallow on the magnetic needle," and as groundless too.

The gymnoti are difficult to be taken by nets, on account of their extreme agility, and their burying themselves in the mud like serpents; they are more easily caught by the roots of the piscidea erithryna, jacquinia armillaris, and some species of phyllanthus, which when thrown into the pool, intoxicate or benumb them. This, however, would have enfeebled the gymnoti, and Humboldt wished to procure them in full vigour.

The Indians therefore told him that they would set the fish to sleep, or intoxicate them with horses.

He found it difficult to conceive what this meant; but he saw the guides, who had gone to the savannah, return presently to the stream of muddy water to which he had been conducted, with about thirty horses and mules which they had collected.

The novel and singular scene which ensued is thus described by that traveller:--

"The extraordinary noise caused by the horses' hoofs makes the fish issue from the mud, and excites them to combat.

These yellowish and livid eels, resembling large aquatic serpents, swim on the surface of the water, and crowd under the bellies of the horses and mules.

A contest between animals of so different an organization, furnishes a striking spectacle.

The Indians, provided with harpoons and long slender reeds, surround the pool closely; and some climb upon the trees, the branches of which extend horizontally over the surface of the water.

By their wild cries and the length of their reeds, they prevent the horses from running away and reaching the bank of the pool.

The eels, stunned by the noise, defend themselves by the repeated discharge of their electric batteries.

During a long time they seem to prove victorious.

Several horses sink beneath the violence of the invisible strokes, which they receive from all sides in organs the most essential to life; and stunned by the force and frequency of the shocks, disappear under the water.

Others, panting, with mane erect and haggard eyes, expressing anguish, raise themselves, and endeavour to flee from the storm by which they are overtaken.

They are driven back by the Indians into the middle of the water; but a small number succeed in eluding the active vigilance of the fishermen.

These regain the shore, stumbling at every step, and stretch themselves on the sand, exhausted with fatigue, and their limbs benumbed by the electric shocks of the gymnoti.

"In less than five minutes, two horses were drowned.

The eel, being five feet long, and pressing itself against the belly of the horses, makes a discharge along the whole extent of its electric organ. It attacks at once the heart, the intestines, and the plexus caeliacus of the abdominal nerves.

It is natural that the effect felt by the horses should be more powerful than that produced upon man by the touch of the same fish at only one of his extremities.

The horses are probably not killed, but only stunned.

They are drowned from the impossibility of rising amid the prolonged struggle between the other horses and the eels.

"We had little doubt that the fishing would terminate by killing successively all the animals engaged; but by degrees the impetuosity of this unequal combat diminished, and the wearied gymnoti dispersed.

They require a long rest, and abundant nourishment, to repair what they have lost of galvanic force.

The mules and horses appear less frightened; their manes are no longer bristled, and their eyes express less dread.

The gymnoti approach timidly the edge of the marsh, where they are taken by means of small harpoons fastened to long cords.

When the cords are very dry, the Indians feel no shock in raising the fish into the air.

In a few minutes we had five large eels, the greater part of which were but slightly wounded.

Some were taken by the same means towards the evening."

M. de Humboldt says it would be temerity to expose oneself to the first shocks of a large and strongly irritated gymnotus; that a stroke from such a face is productive of much pain and numbness; and that he received so dreadful a shock by imprudently placing his feet on one just taken out of the water, that he was affected the rest of the day with a violent pain in the knees, and in almost every joint.

He adds that the electric action of the fish depends entirely on its will, and that it has the power of directing the action of its organs to any particular part of the external object that may affect it, or towards the point where it finds itself the most strongly irritated.

"The presence of the gymnoti," says Humboldt, "is considered as the principal cause of the want of fish in the ponds and pools of the Llanos.

The gymnoti kill many more than they devour; and the Indians told us, that when they take young alligators and gymnoti at the same time in very strong nets, the latter never display the slightest trace of a wound, because they disable the young alligators before they are attacked by them.

All the inhabitants of the waters dread the society of the gymnoti.

Lizards, tortoises, and frogs, seek the pools where they are secure from their action.

It became necessary to change the direction of a road near Uritucu, because these electrical eels were so numerous in one river, that they every year killed a great number of mules of burden as they forded the water."