The Seventeenth Century 119 



Other writers of the time also paid some attention to lumines- 

 cences. Paolo Boccone (1633-1704) , the distinguished Sicilian natur- 

 alist, included the Bolognian phosphor, electrical phenomena in 

 man, and many " animal phosphors " in his book, Osservazioni 

 Naturali, ove si contengono materie medico-fisiche, e di hotanica, 

 published at Bologna in 1684 (p. 224-248) . He recorded as lumi- 

 nous, balani in the harbor of Ancona, fish, sea anemonies, the 

 " Satyrus marinus " of Antonio Donati," and various luminous 

 beetles and worms, all of which required a certain amount of damp- 

 ness in order to light. He noticed small animals in the sea near 

 England that luminesced like the firefly and mentioned the observa- 

 tions of Count Marsigli on light from lizards' eggs. This phe- 

 nomenon was attributed to egg-white combined with slime, thus 

 forming an animal phosphor. 



During the latter part of the seventeenth century three new lumi- 

 nous animals were discovered. In 1666 de la Voye and Auzout 

 showed that the light of living oysters was actually due to luminous 

 marine worms living in them, Grimm (1670) discovered luminous 

 earthworms along the Coromandel coast, and Meriam recorded the 

 light of the lantern-fly, Fulgora, from Surinam in 1699, although 

 publication of the account was delayed until 1705. The cucuyo 

 continued to be an object of wonder to travelers, and the firefly 

 and glowworm a subject for speculation, but there was no real 

 progress in understanding the way in which the light was pro- 

 duced. The details of all these discoveries will be found in the 

 chapter on Bioluminescence. 



New Phosphors 



Modern chemistry really started at the end of the seventeenth 

 century, arising from two main early endeavors, (1) the search for 

 a philosopher's stone— some method of transforming base metals to 

 gold— and (2) the search for an elixir of life and panacea— some 

 means of prolonging youth and curing all the ills of mankind. 

 With this close connection between medicine and chemistry it might 

 be supposed that the luminescence of wood, flesh, and fish, or ani- 

 mals of the sea would attract the attention of the late iatrochemists. 

 However, no important discussions of these phenomena are to be 

 found in the writings of Johann Baptista van Helmont (1577-1644) 

 or Johann Rudolf Glauber*- (1604-1668). Van Helmont particu- 



" A. Donati was a Venetian naturalist (1603-1659), who wrote Frattato de semplici, 

 pietri e pesci marini, etc. (Venezia, 1631) . 



*^ The English translation of Glauber's Works by Christopher Packe, a 756-page 

 folio volume issued at London in 1689, contains nothing on phosphors or biolumi- 

 nescent phenomena in the index. 



