Shining Fish, Flesh, and Wood 471 



Boyle's observations on luminous meat were made in 1672 when 

 a servant found a brightly luminous neck of veal in his cellar. He 

 wrote: " Notwithstanding the great Number of lucid Parts not the 

 least degree of Stench was perceivable to infer any Putrefaction " 

 and he could not " by the touch discern the least degree of heat in 

 the parts whence it proceeded." Thinking that atmospheric condi- 

 tions had something to do with the luminescence, Boyle carefully 

 noted that " The Wind as far as we could observe it, was then at 

 South-ivest, and blustering enough, the Air by the sealed Thermo- 

 scope, appeared hot for the season, the Moon was past its last Quar- 

 ter; the Mercury in the Barometer stood at 29 3/16 inches." ^® 



Boyle also investigated luminous wood and fish in a paper entitled 

 " New Experiments (to the number of 16) Concerning the Rela- 

 tion of Light and Air (in Shining Wood and Fish) ," published in 

 the Phil. Trans. (No. 31) for 1668. He was not well at the time of 

 his trials but he made eleven experiments, October 29, 1667, and 

 five more on December 6, 1667. They were about evenly divided 

 between wood and fish and left no doubt of the fact that both lost 

 their light in a vacuum and that it returned in the air, sometimes 

 after a three-days stay in the vacuum. Boyle wished to test the King's 

 shining diamond, the Bononian phosphor and a glowworm in a simi- 

 lar manner, but he could not obtain them, and contented himself 

 with a red-hot piece of iron in a clay pipe placed in the vacuum 

 chamber. Contrary to the fish and wood, the redness of the iron 

 did not dim in absence of air and did not become brighter when 

 air was readmitted. 



He endeavored to find out whether luminosity would develop on 

 a piece of fish kept in a vacuum at the same time as it appeared on 

 fish in the air. His purpose was to determine " how great an interest 

 Putrefaction hath in the shining of Fishes, and Air in the Phe- 

 nomena of Putrefaction." The idea was excellent but the experi- 

 ments failed, in one case because the glass receiver broke and in 

 another because neither piece of fish developed luminosity. 



The last result led Boyle to comment on his experiences with 

 shining fish, that having 



caused a competent number of them to be bought, not one of them 

 all would shine, though they were brought by the same person I was 

 wont to employ, and hung up in the same place where I use to have 

 them put, and kept not only 'till they began to putrifie, but beyond the 

 time that others used to shine; although a parcel of the same kind of 

 Fisches [whiting], bought the week before, and another of the same 

 kind, bought not many days after, shined according to expectation. 



^«T. Birch, Works of Boyle, 3: 651-655, 2nd ed.. 1772; Phil. Trans.. No. 89: 5108. 1672. 



