50 THE AQUARIAN NATURALIST. 



said, that every drop of every wave contains one or 

 more individuals belonging to the brilliant host. On 

 taking up at random a flask of sea-water from any 

 highly phosphorescent billow, and allowing the little 

 creatures to accumulate, as they always do when at 

 rest, at the top, it will be seen that their bodies will 

 form a stratum equalling in thickness from one- 

 seventh to one-third part of the entire contents of 

 the vessel ! After such a demonstration as this, it is 

 easy to comprehend how the entire sea, rendered 

 luminous by the presence of Noctilucse, seems to burn 

 with phosphorescent fire. When the surface of the 

 water is tranquil in some well- sheltered bay, these 

 living gems, rising from their low specific gravity to 

 the top of the water, form a kind of cream of liquid 

 light ; or if a wave disperses their myriads through 

 the mass of the sea, and at the same time calls forth, 

 by agitation, all their brightness, it is easy to imagine 

 how a flame is thus evoked that spreads for miles, 

 giving, at a distance, the appearance of a uniform 

 sheet of light, but when closely examined, resolvable, 

 like the nebulae in the firmament, into constituent 

 stars. 



Philosophers have been naturally anxious to dis- 

 cover the object of this curious property of emitting 

 light. " Meditating upon this subject," says Mr. J. 

 V. Thompson, " I think it not improbable that the 

 Deity, who has done nothing in vain, and whose 

 omniscience extends to every epoch, foreseeing that 

 man would invent the means of tempting the track- 

 less ocean, has given it as one means of rendering his 

 nights less gloomy, and of diminishing the number of 



