319 

 MARINE PHOSPHORESCENCE 



AND ITS 



DEPENDENCE ON ANIMAL LIFE. 



ALTHOUGH we find many curious phenomena, attri- 

 butable to phosphorescence, displayed in the lower 

 grades of the creation on land, it is only in the wider 

 expanse of the aqueous globe that we see this property 

 acting to its most surprising and mysterious extent, 

 and with a constancy that invites to a free investigation 

 of its origin and use. 



Many opinions have been at different times enter- 

 tained upon the cause of a luminous state of the 

 ocean : some have supposed it to depend upon a pecu- 

 liar electrical condition of the atmosphere, or the pre- 

 sence of decomposed animal matter, which we may 

 reasonably suppose is plentifully diffused in sea-water ; 

 whilst others have attributed this effect to the luminous 

 power possessed by living marine animals. And of 

 these, the last appears the more just opinion, and 

 one which has been so well supported by many conclu- 

 sive facts, recently discovered and submitted to the 

 notice of British naturalists, as to be the best entitled to 

 general adoption. It is a belief to which I have always 

 been inclined, and which my researches in foreign seas 

 have materially tended to confirm. 



It would, nevertheless, be rash to assert, that the 

 decomposition of animal matter is never the cause of a 

 luminous sea ; for, on the contrary, we have reason to 

 believe that it may often be so, although much more 

 rarely than living organized beings, or the luminous 

 secretion detached from them. Abortive ova or spawn 

 may prove an extensive source of marine phospho- 



