59 



CHAP. V. 



SUBLIMITY OF THE OCEAN. ITS POPULATION. 

 PHOSPHORESCENCE OF THE SEA. EXPERIMENTS 

 WITH LUMINOUS SALT WATER. LUMINOSITY OF 

 THE BALTIC. INCREASED BRILLIANCY A PRESAGE 



OF THE STORM. SOME BRITISH LUMINOUS MOL- 



LUSC^E DISCRIMINATED. PECULIAR LUMINOUS 



EFFECTS DESCRIBED BY NAVIGATORS. 



THE luminosity of the sea has attracted attention in 

 every age, and from the earliest period of human 

 history. Its excitement by the movement of the 

 " leviathan" through the depths of the ocean is thus 

 characterised, " He maketh a path to shine after 

 him * ;" nor could it be more literally descriptive of a 

 phenomenon, at once the admiration of the naturalist 

 and the wonder of the mariner. The ocean is in 

 itself a magnificent and sublime object of contempla- 

 tion its vast expanse, and its ' world of waters," a 

 trackless pathway, whereby the adventurous mariner 

 circumnavigates the globe its waves rolling far and 

 wide, are in the dark and stormy night gilded with 

 fires instinct with life its submarine mountains 

 clothed with a vegetation unknown to the land, and its 

 coral trees and caves where the sea-flowers, as the 

 actinias, unfold, and the lily encrinite may expand its 

 radii where all the loveliest and most magnificent of 

 the Buccina, Murices> and Volutes repose undisturbed, 



* Job, xli. 32. 

 D 6 



