Phosphorescence of the Sea 517 



this Spawn in the North; and that sometimes in the Night they appear 

 all over of a bright Light, without being put in Motion by any Vessel or 

 Fish passing by them. But to confirm farther what I say, viz. That the 

 Water, the more glutinous it is, the more it is disposed to become lumi- 

 nous, I shall add one particular which I saw my self. One Day we took 

 in our Ship a Fish, which some thought was a Boneta. The inside of 

 the Mouth of the Fish appeared in the Night like a burning Coal; so that 

 without any other Light, I could read by it the same Characters that I 

 read by the Light in the Wake of the Ship. It's Mouth being full of a 

 viscous Humour, we rubbed a piece of Wood with it, which immediately 

 became all over luminous; but as soon as the Moisture was dried up, 

 the Light was extinguish'd. 



I leave it to be examined whether all these particulars can be ex- 

 plained by the system of such as assert, that the principle of this light 

 consists in the motion of a subtle matter, or globules, caused by a violent 

 agitation of different kinds of salts. 



Had Father Bourzes gone so far as actually to filter the sea water 

 through his " linnen " and had found that thereby the ability of 

 the filtrate to luminesce was lost he would have made a real con- 

 tribution. However, Father Bourzes did imply that the light was 

 organic by his reference to the glutinous material as the " Spawn 

 or seed of Whales " and by his description of the luminous mouth 

 of the Boneta. He was one of the first to break away from a purely 

 physical explanation of sea luminescence. 



Another organic origin of sea light, was presented by M. Deslandes 

 (1713), Commissaire de la Marine, who thought the phosphores- 

 cence was due to the continual decomposition of oily animals like 

 " insects and worms " that lived in the sea. He presumed that this 

 material burned, thus giving off light, a view not too far from the 

 truth. Deslandes' argument was that water kept in casks on ships 

 became full of " worms " and it was reported in the Philosophical 

 Transactions of England that sometimes the old water would burn 

 like spirits of wine. Deslandes doubted the latter statement but 

 remarked that occasionally when a cask was unbunged, a light was 

 to be seen near the bunghole. He thought that possibly this effect 

 was connected with decomposition of the " worms " in the water.^^ 



Many of the papers on marine phosphorescence were no more 

 than records of unusually bright displays, frequently accompanied 



^^ Another Frenchman who particularly noticed the " mer lumineiise " near the Isle 

 de St. Nicholas et St. Lucie et St. Vincent was M. Frezier, Ingenieur Ordinaire du Roy, 

 in his Relation du voyages de la mer du sud aux cotes du Chilly et due Perou (Paris, 

 1714) ; English translation, London, 1717, p. 9) . Frezier remarked that physicists, 

 especially Rohault, had given an explanation of the phenomenon and seemed quite 

 content to accept the physical point of view. 



