"THE MIMIC FIRES OF OCEAN" 1321 



every movement of the wave, every cleavage of the 

 water by oar or prow, reveals in its dark depths a 

 hidden fire which scintillates and sparkles with 

 weird and mysterious light. The spectacle is one of 

 absolute fascination, for the Spirit of Enchantment 

 rests upon the waters and reality becomes fairyland. 



The ancients, keenly alive to a sense of the super- 

 natural, saw in this luminosity a manifestation of 

 some unknown power, and wondered; the ignorant 

 read in it a portent of judgment and terror; while 

 in all ages the curious and the searchers after knowl- 

 edge have speculated as to its cause. But just as 

 Nature has invested its appearance with a halo of 

 mystery, so she has also wrapped in much obscurity 

 its immediate cause; and thus, though in the course 

 of centuries varying suggestions have been put for- 

 ward, nothing with any finality about it has been 

 arrived at. It was asserted truly that certain fishes 

 were luminous; sharks have glowed and shone, 

 shoals of herrings, pilchards, or mackerel have been 

 moving masses of light, and the fish drawn out of the 

 water have lain in great shining heaps, the glow of 

 which vanished as they dried and died. 



Many writers have described the passages of ships 

 through such shoals the sheet of moving flames 

 the beautiful pale greenish elf-light that the fish ex- 

 hibited; while poets have apostrophized the "mimic 

 fires of ocean" and the "lightnings of the wave," and 

 scientists and naturalists have in turn tried to ac- 

 count for their power of luminosity. Some have at- 

 tributed it to the presence of certain substances of a 

 fatty nature excreted by the fish and adhering to the 



