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their paintings and their symmetry alike lost to 

 human vision, until the storm rakes up a specimen 

 of these beautiful structures, or some friendly wave 

 casts a cone or cowry on the shore. In its wondrous 

 meadows browse the dugongs of Indian seas, like cattle 

 in our own. Some of its inhabitants are living electric 

 machines or Galvanic batteries, such as the TricMurus 

 indicus and Tetraodon electricus of tropical seas, and 

 the Torpedo vulgaris of the British coast. Then the 

 light that sparkles in its waters or flashes like lightning 

 through its veins. These are a few of the wonders of 

 the deep ; and though it might be reasonably supposed 

 that the latter phenomenon, so common yet so curious, 

 would have been made the subject of rigorous exam- 

 ination, it does not appear to have engaged philosophi- 

 cal scrutiny until very lately, and even at a compara- 

 tively recent period, the most absurd conjectures were 

 hazarded on the question. Thus it is said, by Olof 

 Wasserstrom, in the Transactions of the Swedish 

 Academy for 1798, that the phosphorescence of the sea, 

 in northern countries, may sometimes be occasioned 

 by the small and very thin needles of ice which almost 

 cover its surface, being broken in pieces by the agita- 

 tion of the waves, and thus emitting a light, may assist 

 in giving a luminous character to the sea ! This is 

 hypothesis strained to its utmost ; for the cause that 

 produces the phenomenon in warmer climes must be 

 operative in higher latitudes. Some fish, such as the 

 herring, mackerel, whiting, &c. yield light in the inci- 

 pient stage of decay : in such cases, we believe, it pro- 

 ceeds from adhering, and perhaps parasitic, luminous 

 animalculae, the evolution of light being the effect of 

 the slight increment of temperature produced by the 

 commencement of animal decomposition. Dr. Ure 

 has given us some curious and interesting remarks on 



