Man prides himself on his powers and attainments. Has he ever made a
rose or produced a mechanism like the hand, or done a thousand things
that Nature knows?
As an illustration of Nature’s superiority, the electric ray is cited.
The electric ray, or torpedo, has been provided with a battery
which, while it closely resembles, yet in the beauty and
compactness of its structure it greatly exceeds the batteries
by which man has now learned to make the laws of electricity
subservient to his will. In this battery there are no less than
940 hexagonal columns, like those of a bees’ comb, and each of
these is subdivided by a series of horizontal plates, which
appear to be analogous to the plates of the voltaic pile. The
whole is supplied with an enormous amount of nervous matter,
four great branches of which are as large as the animal’s
spinal cord, and these spread out in a multitude of thread-like
filaments round the prismatic columns, and finally pass into all
the cells. A complete knowledge of all the mysteries which have
been gradually unfolded from the days of Galvani to those of
Faraday, and of many others which are still inscrutable to us,
is exhibited in this structure.
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