110 DEAD ANIMAL MATTER, 
served in a luminous state at night, the Dutch 
and Belgian peasants imagine that it has been 
dropped upon the ground by some passing shoot- 
me star; and in Mulder’s account of its chemical 
composition, given by Berzelius in his ‘ Rapport 
Annuel’ (French edition), he distinguishes it by 
the designation of ‘‘ mucilage atmosphérique.” 
My attention was called lately to a case of lumi- 
nous urine, observed by a friend of mine, in 1859, 
during a warm summer in Paris. It was observed to 
shine with a slight phosphoric hght when stirred. 
I was at first inclined to attribute this to a phe- 
nomenon of reflection, but I find that the same 
fact was observed many years ago by two well- 
known medical men, Reiselius and Pettenkofer, 
one of whom witnessed this phosphorescence in 
November, and the other in March. It appears, 
therefore, evident that urime may become lumi- 
nous in certain circumstances with which we are 
not acquainted. The old chemist Lemery has, 
moreover, remarked that urine is sometimes phos- 
phorescent. | 
