Memoire sur une nouvelle espece de gymnote de la Riviere de la Madeleine BOUND TOGETHER WITH Observations sur l'anguille electrique (Gymnotus electricus, Lin.) du Nouveau Continent, EXTRACT FROM Voyage aux Regions Equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, fait en 1799-1804, etc by Humboldt, Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von - 1806

[Paris], 1806. First edition.

FIRST EDITION--HUMBOLDT'S FAMOUS DESCRIPTION OF "HORSE FISHING" ELECTRIC EELS AT RASTRO DE ABAXO, BOUND WITH ENGRAVING DEMONSTRATING THE ELECTRIC ORGAN.

25x33 cm folio extract in gray paper wraps, ink inscribed title and small handstamp "Library or R. Harry, Jr." to cover. Memoire sur une Nouvelle Espece de Gymnote de la Riviere de la Madeleine by M. de Humboldt pp. (46-) 48, BOUND WITH Observations sur L'Anguille Electrique (Gymnotus electricus, Lin.) du Nouveau Continent, pp. (49-) 92 by M. de Humboldt, hand-colored engraved plate. Wrappers soiled; a corner creased; 2 marginal tears to wrappers; a tear to upper blank margin of first page repaired with paper on verso; some wrinkling to lower corners; corners curled, scattered foxing, very good minus.

The two papers appeared in "Le Voyage aux Regions Equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent, fait en 1799-1804," by Alexandre de Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland (Paris, 1806, etc.), consisting of thirty folio and quarto volumes (French language).

FRIEDRICH HEINRICH ALEXANDER von HUMBOLDT (1769 - 1859) was a Prussian geographer, naturalist and explorer. Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in Latin America, exploring and describing it for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. He was one of the first to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Later, his five-volume work, Kosmos (1845), attempted to unify the various branches of scientific knowledge. Humboldt supported and worked with other scientists, including Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, Justus von Liebig, Louis Agassiz, Matthew Fontaine Maury, Georg von Neumayer, and most notably, Aimé Bonpland, with whom he conducted much of his scientific exploration. On the postponement of Captain Nicolas Baudin's proposed voyage of circumnavigation, which he had been officially invited to accompany, Humboldt left Paris for Marseille with Aimé Bonpland, the designated botanist of the frustrated expedition, hoping to join Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt. Means of transport, however, were not forthcoming, and the two travellers eventually found their way to Madrid, where the unexpected patronage of the minister Don Mariano Luis de Urquijo convinced them to make Spanish America the scene of their explorations. Armed with powerful recommendations from the King of Spain, they sailed in the Pizarro from A Coruña, on June 5, 1799, stopped six days on the island of Tenerife to climb the volcano Teide, and landed at Cumaná, Venezuela, on July 16. On March 19, 1800, during a four-month excursion to explore the course of the Orinoco River, Humboldt and Bonpland recruited natives in the South American village of Rastro de Abaxo to help them capture live specimens of electric eels, which fascinated Humboldt. The creatures were difficult to catch because they burrow into the muck of shallow waters. The natives suggested "horse fishing" — corralling several wild horses and forcing them into the shallow water. According to Humboldt's account, the alarmed animals stamped and snorted, riling up the eels and compelling them to attack by pressing their long bodies to the horses' bellies, releasing a series of electric shocks. Surprisingly, this worked, although some of the horses drowned in the process. The eels quickly exhausted themselves and were much easier to catch with small harpoons on ropes. Many scientists thought this was just a tall tale — one naturalist memorably called it "tommyrot" — because nobody had observed such behavior since. But in 2016, Kenneth Catania, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University published a paper reporting on a series of laboratory experiments with electric eels.* His findings lent credence to Humboldt's account of eels aggressively leaping up and stunning the horses with a series of high-voltage discharges. Catania argued that, under certain conditions, this mode of attack might be more effective than simply discharging electric shocks in the surrounding water. In 1838, Michael Faraday conducted his own experiments with electric eels and experienced only mild shocks, presumably because water in nature, with its copious dissolved salts, is a good conductor of electricity. Catania's work suggests that Humboldt's account would be especially plausible during the onset of the dry season, when eels are more likely to become stranded in shallow bodies of water. The paper on Gymnotus electricus offered here includes the original description of Humboldt's observation of capturing the eels by "horse fishing."

PROVENANCE: R. HARRY, JR. (aka Robert Rees Harry, later Robert R. Rofen, Robert R. Harry-Rofen), Stanford University ichthyologist (born 1925).

*Catania, K. 2016. Leaping eels electrify threats, supporting Humboldt's account of a battle with horses. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 113, 6979, REVIEWED IN, Ed Yong. The Stunning Case of Leaping Electric Eels. The Atlantic, June 6, 2016.