110 DEAD ANIMAL MATTER. 



served in a luminous state at night, the Dutch 

 and Belgian peasants imagine that it has been 

 dropped upon the ground by some passing shoot- 

 ing star; and in Mulder' s account of its chemical 

 composition, given by Berzelius in his ' Rapport 

 Annuel' (French edition), he distinguishes it by 

 the designation of " mucilage atmospherique." 



My attention was called lately to a case of lumi- 

 nous urine, observed by a friend of mine, in 1859, 

 during a warm summer in Paris. It was observed to 

 shine with a slight phosphoric light when stirred. 

 I was at first inclined to attribute this to a phe- 

 nomenon of reflection, but I find that the same 

 fact was observed many years ago by two well- 

 known medical men, Reiselius and Pettenkofer, 

 one of whom witnessed this phosphorescence in 

 November, and the other in March. It appears, 

 therefore, evident that urine may become lumi- 

 nous in certain circumstances with which we are 

 not acquainted. The old chemist Lemery has, 

 moreover, remarked that urine is sometimes phos- 

 phorescent. 



