86 History of Luminescence 



cuts of strange animals and double-headed human monsters of all 

 kinds have been retained. Many of the omens appeared simul- 

 taneously—a comet and a " boy with two legges " or " At London in 

 Eng-lande trees seemed to be a fire. At Yorke fountaines ranne 

 bloude. In Keiit a Boye laughed in hys mothers belly." Earth- 

 quakes, plague, cloudes of grasshoppers, streams of bloude and 

 rayned stones are all recorded, together with the occasions when 

 " the skie was scene to burne " or " the Elemente seemed to burne " 

 or " a burning torch was scene in the Elemente." Such prodigies 

 were displays of the aurora, many of them taken from the records of 

 Julius Obsequens (see Chap. I) . Lycosthenes apparently believed 

 the bands of the luminous arc of an aurora were the tails of comets, 

 whose heads were below the horizon. 



Another chronicler of the period and a particularly trustworthy 

 one, according to de Mairan (1733) , was Cornelius Gemma the 

 Frisian (1535-1577) , an astronomer and a famous M. D. of Louvain, 

 son of Reinier Gemma (1508-1555), also a physician. In his two 

 books, De Divinis Naturae Characterismis (Antwerp, 1575) and 

 De Prodigiosa Specie utraque Cometae anni 1577 cum adjuncta 

 explicatione duorum chasmatum anni 1575 (Antwerp, 1578) , he 

 recorded the important displays of the sixteenth century in great 

 detail, *^^ describing one as like " a great eagle suspended in air by 

 balancing its extended wings directed from east to west," and another 

 as resembling balls of fire (ignium globas . . . nubium . . . specie 

 rotundos) . 



Shining Flesh 



Another of the remarkable phenomena which excited the interest 

 of the learned in the sixteenth century was the light which occa- 

 sionally appeared on fish or flesh, now known to result from the 

 growth of luminous bacteria. It is possible that these bacteria were 

 responsible for the luminous fish, Orthogoriscus, mentioned by Ron- 

 delet. George Reisch (second half fifteenth century) , the German 

 savant, wrote in Margarita Philosophica (1496) that " Fish in their 

 scales comprehend some fiery parts, and by that they shine." This 

 statement is probably a repetition of Aristotle, but it seems quite 

 certain that at least two other writers saw colonies of luminous 

 bacteria growing on fish or meat. 



In 1557 Cardanus (Girolamo Cardano, Jerome Cardan, 1501- 

 1576) reported in De Rerum Varietate (1557: 26) that he had seen 

 the light of dead sea fish during a visit to Scotland in 1552 to attend 

 John Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, who was ill with tuber- 



«6See de Mairan. 1733: 181-186. 



