Page:Life in Motion.djvu/200

180 the time when the Italian philosopher noticed the twitches of a frog's leg near his electrical machine. Truly there is nothing small and insignificant in science. An observation of a phenomenon obscure in character and not striking to the senses may be the key by which we open new stores of knowledge.

It has often been remarked that many of man's inventions have their counterpart in nature. In the subject we are discussing we have a proof of the truth of the remark. In nature we find living electrical machines. When one considers how potent electricity is, a kind of "vril" (to use the word coined by the author of The Coming Race), armed with which a being might become a terrible antagonist, it is remarkable that electric organs have as yet been found only in a few species of fishes. No doubt the explanation may be offered that the conditions of the environment of living things are not favourable to the general evolution of electric organs, and while this explanation is probably true, it does not lessen, I think, the sense of astonishment. Some fifty fishes possess electrical organs, and of these only five or six have been