106 HMISSION OF LIGHT BY 
phosphorescence of a neck of veal, which shone wm 
more than twenty places, as decayed wood or putre- 
fying fish do. 
In 1838, M. Julia de Fontenelle related in his 
‘Journal des Sciences Physiques et Chimiques,’ 
a curious case of phosphorescent hght observed 
upon the dead body of a man. Such cases of 
phosphorescence are not unfrequent in dissecting 
rooms, but often escape observation, as neither 
students nor professors visit these rooms at night, 
and when a person does happen to enter them 
after dark, the hight he carries in his hand is too 
powerful to allow him to perceive the phosphoric 
radiations which often emanate from fragments of 
dead bodies lying about. 
As this chapter is devoted exclusively to the 
phosphorescence of animal matter which has lost 
its vitality, I have reserved certaim observations 
concerning evolutions of light by living subjects 
for a future one. 
All the observations we possess regarding the 
nature of the hght emitted by dead animal matter 
coincide with those of Robert Boyle, published as 
stated above, in the year 1672. When all the lucid 
parts of the shining neck of veal were surveyed 
at once, they made, he tells us, ‘‘a very splendid 
show.” By applying a printed paper to some of 
the more luminous spots, divers letters of the title 
could be distinguished. But notwithstanding the 
