122 History of Luminescence 



to name. The subject was the equivalent of cosmology and so broad 

 that physical compilations were of encyclopedic proportions, includ- 

 ing mathematics, astronomy, meteorology, etc. The classical divisions 

 of physics— mechanics, properties of matter, sound, heat, light, elec- 

 tricity, and magnetism— under the designation " Natural Philoso- 

 phy " appeared in textbooks of physics in the eighteenth century. 



Perhaps Jacques Rohault's (1620-1675) Traite de Physique 

 (1671) , which adopted Cartesian principles, and contained a good 

 deal of chemistry, was the best of the seventeenth-century books on 

 general physics. It was translated into Latin in 1671 and into Eng- 

 lish in 1723. Rohault's views on luminescence, essentially like those 

 of Lemery, are best presented at the end of this chapter. With the 

 exception of these two authors, seventeenth-century textbooks of 

 chemistry and physics were definitely disappointing in their con- 

 sideration of luminescence. 



Theses on Things that Shiiie at Night 



Compared with early textbooks of chemistry and physics, the 

 treatment of luminescence in dissertations ** was quite adequate. 

 One of the earliest was a Schediasma de Avibus Noctu Lucentihus 

 by Cornelius Vogel, with M. Joachim Feller presiding, presented to 

 the Leipzig Academy, and published at Leipzig in 1669 (see title 

 page as figure 9) . The ten-page pamphlet includes much more than 

 Pliny's luminous birds of the Hercynian Forest. 



Vogel spoke of light as one of the ornaments of the world and 

 distinguished three groups or orders of light emissions. In the 

 highest category is the sky with its heavenly bodies; in the second, 

 fire and fiery meteors; while in the third are the gleaming things 

 (fulgentia) , either animate or inanimate, endowed with light visible 

 only in the dark. 



The luminescences mentioned in the first half of the thesis 

 include luminous jewels, the Bononian stone, fungi, fish scales, 

 shining wood and flesh, glowworms, the cucujo, worms in oysters, 

 cat's eyes, and fur, etc.— all the luminous phenomena recognized at 

 the time. However, there is no more information than a listing 

 of the person who reported the luminescence. The author's remarks 

 are merely preliminary to his main topic in which the views of 

 various commentators on luminous birds are given, with a final 

 conclusion similar to Michovius that " the birds which shine at 



** In addition to dissertations, a number of books on fire include many kinds of 

 luminescence, for example Ezechele di Castro's Ignis lambens (Verona, 1642) , dis- 

 cussed in Chapter VII, and De igne (Frankfurt and Zurich, 1688) by Paolo Casati, 

 discussed in a later section of this chapter. 



