The Eighteenth Century 159 



Vianelli in 1749. Noctiluca was described by Baker (1753) from a 

 letter of Sparshall; then ostracods (Godeheu de Riville, 1754) and 

 shrimp ^^ (Banks and Solander, 1768) were observed to be luminous 

 and, finally, ctenophores were recognized as contributing to the light 

 of the sea by Bosc (1800) . Details of all this new knowledge will 

 be found in Chapters XIV, XV, and XVI, dealing with " Burning 

 of the Sea," " Shining Wood, Fish and Flesh " and " Animal Lumi- 

 nescence," respectively. 



Encyclopedias 



Following the great books of knowledge of the Middle Ages, the 

 compilation of facts was for a time published in more compact and 

 concise works. A number of these, both dictionaries and cyclo- 

 pedias, appeared during the late seventeenth century, by Furetiere, 

 Corneille, Moreri, Coignard, Bayle, and others, but not all dealt 

 with science. Often called dictionaries or lexicons, they were really 

 cyclopedias, with a detailed treatment of the subjects discussed. Some 

 of them, for example Le Grand Dictionnaire Historique of Louis 

 Moreri (1643-1680) , were greatly enlarged in the eighteenth-cen- 

 tury editions and contained articles on phosphors. 



furetiere's dictionnaire 



The best of the early compilations was the Dictionnaire Universel 

 (1690) of Antoine Furetiere (1620-1688) , sponsored by the French 

 Academy. It was quite up to date in treatment of luminescence and 

 will serve as a reference point with which to compare the larger 

 works of the eighteenth century. 



Furetiere's dictionary as well as his Essais (1684) places science 

 first. He proposed to explain " les termes de toutes les Sciences et 

 des Arts " rather than the Arts and Sciences, a subtitle used in 

 practically all other compilations. 



Furetiere gave nine senses in which the word " lumiere " is used, 

 many of them figurative . The physical meaning is defined as 



a very subtile body, rapid [prompt] and fine [deslie], which causes bright- 

 ness, which brightens, which gives color to all things and which renders 

 objects visible. ..." Lumiere " also applies to all other gleaming things 

 [clartez sublunaires] such as those which come from fire, flame, candles, 

 torches and other natural or artificial bodies like the glow-worm, rotten 



" Marine shrimp are self-luminous. Probably the first example of a luminous 

 bacterial infection of a fresh-water shrimp, the " crevette de riviere," was observed by 

 Thulis and Bernard (1786) , without knowing that the light must have been due to 

 luminous bacteria. Among land animals, the first case of luminous bacterial infection 

 was observed by Hablitzl among the midges of the Bay of Astrabad, Persia, in 1782. 



