PHOSPHORESCENCE. 49 
candles at the distanceof 95,000,000 of miles, which 
is our distance from the sun. Hence it follows, 
that the amount of light which flows from the sun 
could scarcely be produced by the daily consump- 
tion of 700 globes of tallow, each equal to the Harth 
in magnitude. 
It does not follow that because planetary bodies 
shine principally by borrowed light, that they do 
not possess also a certain amount of phosphoric 
luminosity. Some modern philosophers are in- 
clined to believe that our earth itself has a peculiar 
phosphoric light of its own :— 
“The extraordinary lightness of whole nights im 
the year 1831,” says Alex. von Humboldt, “ during 
which small prmt might be read at midnight in 
the latitudes of Italy and the north of Germany, 
is a fact directly at variance with all that we know 
according to the most recent and accurate re- 
searches on the crepuscular theory and the height 
of the atmosphere.” (Cosmos, 1.133, 134.) And, 
again in the same beautiful work (p. 197), when 
speaking of the Aurora Borealis :— This beautiful 
phenomenon derives the greater part of its 1m- 
portance from the fact that the earth becomes 
self-luminous, and that as a planet, besides the 
hght which it receives from the central body the 
Sun, it shows itself capable in itself of developing 
hight.” The intensity of the light thus diffused is 
often superior to that shed by the moon in her 
E 
