108 History of Luminescence 



at Lugduni Batavorum (Leyden) ."^ The title page is reproduced as 

 figure 7. Another edition appeared in 1669 with practically no 

 change in text, although the title was new, De Luce Hominum et 

 Brutorum. It was bound with Gesner's De Lunariis (1555) , which 

 Bartholin had emended. All editions are divided into three books, 

 I " De luce hominum," II " De luce brutorum," and III " De causis 

 lucis animantium," The whole compilation contains more than 

 four hundred pages (1647 edition) , with the first and third books 

 of about equal size but the second book on the light of animals 

 occupying only seventy pages. There is an excellent index. 



Considerable attention will be paid to Bartholin's book, for it 

 describes every luminescent phenomenon kno^vn at that time 

 whether real or imagined, organic or inorganic. It reveals particu- 

 larly well the approach to a scientific subject characteristic of the 

 early part of the seventeenth century. Bartholin tells in his intro- 

 duction how 



I was first thrown into those reflections on rich light by the lamb's meat 

 at Montpellier that was shining in the market [see Chapter XIV]. While 

 the minds of the inhabitants were wavering between several conjectures, 

 it made me take my pen and urged me on by the novelty of the case 

 once I had started my wanderings. Then I decided to extend this 

 ' splendid ' subject through all the living species and illustrate them 

 either by their own examples or those found in our authors. 



A key to his ideas is also given in the introduction: 



I have claimed the innate light as a fifth principle or element, which 

 either shines brightly from itself or by an added movement, like sparks 

 elicited from the rubbing of steel or silex, from eyes pounded with a 

 fist and fire from teeth, for which Hornungus cites an example. That 

 they are kindled by the appropriate matter is shown on the twelve year 

 old boy in Rome who brought forth sparks from his hair by friction 

 and whose head smelled of sulphur. . . . Such and similar things occu- 

 pied my youthful pen. 



His interest in the stibject persisted through his life, as evidenced 

 by remarks in the 1669 edition, revised twenty-six years"* after the 

 first: -^ 



-^^ There are 1643, 1647, 1663, and 1669 editions given in L. Agassiz, Bibliographica 

 zoologica (1848) , but the Bibliotheca danica (1877) mentions only 1647 and 1669, and 

 I have been unable to find a 1643 edition in the catalogue of the British Museum, the 

 national libraries of France, Germany, and Denmark, or in Leiden, or any library of 

 the United States. 



2* This is Bartholin's statement. Twenty-six years before 1669 would be 1643, but 

 there is no record of an edition in that year. 



-^ All quotations are from the 1669 edition, from translations kindly made for me 

 by Mrs. Annemarie Holborn. 



