ON OZONE. 101 
‘Why that power is not enjoyed by uncombined carbon or hydrogen we 
know no more than we can as yet give a good reason for the fact that 
oxygen, being in a certain state of combination, is more apt to unite with 
oxidizable substances than uncombined oxygen. The phosphorescence of the 
sea, which never fails to strike with astonishment every man who witnesses 
for the first time that beautiful pheenomenon, seems to originate in organic 
matter, which in a state of minute mechanical division is mixed up with the 
waters of the ocean. If Iam not mistaken, one of the first-rate philoso- 
phical observers of the day, Ehrenberg, takes that view of the subject. The 
intensity of this phosphorescence is not everywhere the same; in the tropical 
climates the phenomenon is more brilliant than in the seas of the colder 
regions. It is also well known that the phosphorescence of the sea is inti- 
mately connected with the motion of its waters, or to speak more properly, 
that the phenomenon is dependent upon the particles of those waters being 
brought in immediate contact with the atmosphere. When a ship moves 
about, or the wind happens to agitate the sea, the surface of the brine is 
continually renewed, and consequently new particles of organic matter are 
every moment brought into contact with the surrounding air. As under 
these circumstances the phosphorescence is always called forth, the German 
philosopher has come to the conclusion that the phenomenon mentioned is 
principally due to an action exerted by the atmosphere upon the waters of 
the ocean, and ingeniously enough Ehrenberg considers that phosphorescence 
as the effect of a sort of respiration of the sea. If the waters of the ocean 
were found to contain phosphorus dissolved, nobody would doubt in the 
least that the phosphorescence in question depended upon the slow com- 
bustion of that substance taking place at the surface of the sea, and we could 
easily see why the motion of its waters, the temperature, &c., exert an in- 
fluence upon the phenomenon. Now as we have got in shining wood an 
organic matter which, like phosphorus, undergoes the slow combustion in 
moist air, and as it is not unlikely that phosphorus and shining wood act in 
the same way upon atmospheric air, that is to say, that both substances pro- 
duce ozone out of the oxygen and aqueous vapour of the atmosphere, it ap- 
pears not improbable that there exist some other organic substances enjoying 
the property of shining in the dark. The organic matter occurring in the 
waters of the sea, and originating in the remains of a countless number of 
animal beings which are daily dying in the depths of the ocean, may very 
possibly enjoy that property, so much the more as that matter happens to be 
in a state of extremely minute mechanical division. 
According to the conjecture suggested, we may consider that animal matter, 
with regard to its bearing to the atmosphere, as a representative either of 
phosphorus or shining wood, and we can account for the phosphorescence 
of the sea in the same way as we have explained the slow combustion which 
phosphorus undergoes in moist atmospheric air. Agreeably to that view, 
the light given out by the waters of the ocean must be considered as the 
effect of a process of oxidation taking place on a most extensive scale, which 
process is carried on less by the free oxygen of the atmosphere, than by that 
of the ozone which we suppose to be produced by the catalytic force of the 
animal matter of the sea. 
It is possible that the glow-worm and other animals shining in the dark 
generate a matter which acts upon atmospheric air in the same way as phos- 
_ phorus does. 
; peat is one of the facts best known, that carbonic acid is continually pro- 
_ duced in the animal body, and that the formation of that compound is inti- 
‘mately connected both with the functions of respiration and the change of 
