94 INTERESTING EXPERIMENTS. . 



ceased by seeing the thing often repeated, till T at 

 length received a pleasure from the extraordinary 

 sight. What was most engaging, each fish showed 

 itself plainly to the eye by the light emitted from 

 its body ; and the same effect was produced by the 

 shells and other sea bodies which I had with me ; 

 even the pails themselves looked like a burning 

 surface. This was not all ; every day the sight 

 was new, because I had new fishes and new shells 

 to observe ; now it was a pilchard, now a molebat ; 

 at one time a purple fish, at another a periwinkle, 

 a polypus, a crab, or a star-fish, that showed its 

 luminous rays in the dark ; in short, I perfectly 

 distinguished the shape of all these different fishes 

 by rays of light which darted from every part of 

 their bodies ; and as I could place them in a thou- 

 sand different positions, I had in my power to give 

 an infinite variety to this beautiful illumination. 



"When the vag-vagues actually compelled me to 

 quit this glittering mansion, and to look for relief 

 abroad, the angry ocean presented me with the 

 same phenomenon on a large scale. The foaming 

 billov\ seemed to metamorphose themselves into 

 mountains of fire, and exhibited to my view a most 

 amazing spectacle, more capable of exciting admi- 

 ration than fear, even in the minds of persons 

 exposed to their fury." 



Many more equally vivacious passages might be 



