Credit: © The Royal Society
Image number: RS.9953
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Comoros ‘electric fish’
Date
1781
Creator
William Paterson (1755 - 1810) , Military officer
Object type
Archive reference number
Material
Dimensions
height (painting): 231mm
width (painting): 187mm
width (painting): 187mm
Subject
Content object
Description
Plate 13 from the paper “An account of a new electric fish”, by William Paterson, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol.76 (1786), pp.382-383.
Marine biological study of a tropical fish, probably a variety of Toby, or puffer-fish, viewed side-on. Contemporary descriptions of the fish style it Tetrodon electrics, although it subsequently proved not have any ability to deliver electric shocks. The author was a subaltern in the 98th Regiment based on Anjouan [then Johanna], an island of the Comoros group off the South-east coast of Africa. His later description of this fish to Sir Joseph Banks (in 1786) apologizes for the quality of his drawing and states that the creature was found in cavities in coral: “In attempting to take one of them in my hand, it gave me so severe an electric shock, that I was obliged to quit my hold.”
Signed and inscribed in ink lower right “Natural size caught at Johanna 1781. W.Paterson.”
Marine biological study of a tropical fish, probably a variety of Toby, or puffer-fish, viewed side-on. Contemporary descriptions of the fish style it Tetrodon electrics, although it subsequently proved not have any ability to deliver electric shocks. The author was a subaltern in the 98th Regiment based on Anjouan [then Johanna], an island of the Comoros group off the South-east coast of Africa. His later description of this fish to Sir Joseph Banks (in 1786) apologizes for the quality of his drawing and states that the creature was found in cavities in coral: “In attempting to take one of them in my hand, it gave me so severe an electric shock, that I was obliged to quit my hold.”
Signed and inscribed in ink lower right “Natural size caught at Johanna 1781. W.Paterson.”
Associated place