Phosphorescence of the Sea 519 



Luminous Worms and Crustacea in the Sea 



After the prize essays of 1717, little speculation on the luminous 

 appearance or burning of the sea occurred until the middle of the 

 century. At this time a large number of papers were published 

 describing small but easily visible luminous animals in sea water. 

 Such observations served to focus attention on the biological origin 

 of sea light. The majority of the papers had to do with marine 

 annelids, the Scolopendra marina of J. Vianelli (1749) , Griselini 

 (1750), and the Abbe Nollet (1750) in the canals of Venice; also 

 C. F. Adler (1752), Father J. Torrubia (1754), J. Baster (1760), 

 and Fougeroux de Bondaroy (1767), described in the section on 

 Marine worms. So much public interest was aroused in the luminous 

 worms of Venice that the observations were printed in the Gentle- 

 man's Magazine for 1753 and 1757 under such titles as " The Cause 

 of the Lustre or Resplendency of the Sea-water in the night time 

 discover'd and explained " and " An account of that Species of 

 Worms, to which the luminous appearance of the sea in the Night- 

 time is owing." The worm of Adler is reproduced as figure 38. 



Small luminous Crustacea were also recognized as a source of sea 

 light. J. Anderson (1747) described Oniscus fulgens (probably 

 shrimp) , and Godehue de Riville (1760) figured a luminous ostra- 

 cod in his paper, significantly entitled, " Memoire sur la mer lumi- 

 neuse " (see fig. 46) . The time was ripe for the discovery of still 

 smaller luminous animals usually referred to as " insects " in the sea. 



Benjamin Franklin 



The views on sea light of one scientist of this period, Benjamin 

 Franklin (1706-1790) , merit special attention,^^ not merely because 

 of his fame as a man of universal interests and unusual talents, but 

 because of his willingness to change an opinion when the facts so 

 indicated. It might be expected that Franklin would lean to the 

 electrical theory of phosphorescence of the sea and he has been 

 widely quoted as believing the phosphorescence to be electrical in 

 origin but he changed his opinion as the result of two simple experi- 

 ments performed in 1750. In a letter to his great friend, Peter Col- 

 linson, Esq. F. R. S. (1694-1768), a wealthy English manufacturer, 

 naturalist, and patron of science, who sent books to the Library 

 Company of Philadelphia, Franklin wrote in September, 1753: 



In my former paper on this subject, wrote first in 1747, enlarged and 



i^See the paper by E. N. Harvey (1940); also I. B. Cohen. Benjamin Franklin's 

 experiments, Cambridge, Mass., 1941. 



