THE 

 LONDON, EDINBURGH and DUBLIN 



PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE 



AND 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



[THIRD SERIES.] 



DECEMBER 1849. 



L. Observations and Experiments on the Noctiluca miliaris, 

 the Animalcular source of the Phosphorescence of the British 

 Seas ; together with a few general remarks on the phcenomena 

 of Vital Phosphorescence. By James H. Pring, M.D.^ 



" A third kind of light arises, no doubt, from living animals which float in the 

 sea, and which must be produced by their peculiar organization, or rather their 

 component parts, which deserve to be better examined by chemical experiment." 

 — Tilloch's Magazine, vol. viii. 1800. 



THE occasional phosphorescence of ocean-water has been 

 the subject of observation amongst naturalists from the 

 days of Pliny down to the present time. The phaenomenon 

 is peculiar to no sea, and though most brilliant between the 

 tropics, yet it occurs also in the frozen ocean of either pole, 

 and, as may be readily inferred, in every intermediate grade 

 of clime. 



Very graphic and highly interesting are the accounts which 

 travellers and others have given of this remarkable appear- 

 ance; and various are the opinions which have at different 

 times been advanced in explanation of its cause. 



It has been conjectured that, during the shining of the sun, 

 light is absorbed l)y the ocean, and that the extrication of it 

 again renders the water luminous, in a manner analogous to 

 the action exemplified by Canton's pyrophorus, the Bononian 

 stones, &c., or to that which has been termed " insolation." 



Again, it has been supposed to depend upon a peculiar 

 electrical state of the atmosphere, or that the ocean itself is at 

 times capable of manifesting this light, as the result of a highly 

 electrical condition of its waters; this last opinion, extraor- 

 dinary as it may now appear, having enrolled the name of 

 Buffbn amongst its supporters. 



* Communicated by the Author, having been read before the British 

 Association at Birmingham, September 1849. 



Phil. Mag. S. 3. Vol. 35. No. 238. Dec. \S\d. 2 D 



