Phosphorescence of the Sea 531 



phosphorus, but connected with decomposition rather than with 

 minute living organisms. 



In 1806 the Batavian Science Society of Haarlem-^ offered the 

 following prize question for an essay to be submitted before Novem- 

 ber, 1807. " What is the cause of the phosphorescence of sea water? 

 Does this phenomenon depend on the presence of living animals; 

 what are they and can they impart to the atmosphere properties 

 which are injurious to man? " This question suggests a belief that 

 maladies appearing at certain times of year might be connected 

 with brilliant displays of phosphorescence of the sea. As there ap- 

 pear to have been no worthy essays submitted for the prize, a gold 

 medal worth thirty ducats,-^ was again offered in 1808 and 1809, 

 after which, no satisfactory answer being received, it was withdrawn. 

 Nevertheless, the mere offer of this prize and its phrasing again indi- 

 cates the interest in marine phosphorescence and the fact that the 

 animal theory of its origin was not generally accepted at the begin- 

 ning of the century. The offers of 1808 and 1809 specifically men- 

 tioned D. Viviani's (1805) paper, Phosphorescentia Maris, and sug- 

 gested that his belief that the light came from living organisms be 

 discussed. Bernouilli's contribution was not mentioned. 



Prizes were also offered by the Russian Academy in 1804 for an 

 essay on the nature of light, and by the French Institute in 1807 

 for an essay on phosphorescence, excluding animals. The winners 

 of the Russian prize. Link (1808) and Heinrich (1808) , and the 

 winner of the French prize, Dessaignes (1809) , hardly mentioned 

 phosphorescence of the sea in their prize essays. For example, Des- 

 saignes merely stated, toward the end of his Chapter V, dealing with 

 " Phosphorescences Spontanees," that one may observe in the sea 

 two kinds of light, (1) " Discrete " and (2) " Continue." The first 

 is due to living animalcules which " transsude un mucus phospho- 

 rescent "; the second depends on the same " mucus en dissolution 

 dans I'eau." 



HUMBOLDT, MACARTNEY, AND TILESIUS 



It was the continuous or unceasing phosphorescence, due to micro- 

 scopic organisms, that was the hardest to explain, but more and 

 more investigators adopted the view that all light of the sea must 

 be attributed to living organisms. Marine exploration was in vogue 

 at the time and many expeditions brought back accounts and speci- 



"See Ann. der Physik 23: 126, 1806; 29:333, 1808; 32:356, 1809. The essay could 

 be written in Dutch, German, French, or Latin. 



^* A ducat contained 3.43 grains of fine gold, worth about $2.30 {Century Dictionary, 

 1900) . 



