128 Royal Society of Edinburgh. 



it all success. We consider that the example set by Sir W. J. Hooker 

 is highly deserving of imitation, as, although none can more admire 

 splendid botanical plates, still we feel that cheap but correct working 

 drawings, such as are supplied by this work and the ' Icones Planta- 

 rum,' are of far greater real use to botanists, many of whom are 

 precluded by their price from becoming possessors of more beautiful 

 but not more accurate works. 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



ROYAL SOCIETY OF EDINBURGH. 



Dec. 18, 1843. — Dr. Abercrombie in the Chair. 



The only communication of the evening bearing on natural history 

 was a paper by Professor Traill " On the Luminousness of the Sea, 

 and on some of the Animals which appear to produce it." 



The author stated that this phsenomenon seems scarcely to be no- 

 ticed in the writings of Aristotle or of Pliny which have reached us, 

 though Pliny was familiar with the light emitted by certain shell-fish, 

 and by the Sea Lung or Medusa. 



Mr. Boyle gives an account, from the journal of a ship-master, of 

 the luminousness of the sea ; and it is particularly detailed, from per- 

 sonal observation, in the Indian Voyage of Father Bourzes in 1704. 

 The first philosophers who ascribed it to light emitted by living 

 animals would seem to be the Abbe NoUet, Professor Vianelli, and 

 Dr. Gressellini of Venice, about the middle of the last century. In 

 Cook's first voyage, the luminous properties of several marine ani- 

 mals are well described by Banks and Solander ; and in his second 

 voyage by Forster. Spallanzani made some good experiments on 

 the phosphorescence of a Medusa in the Straits of Messina. 



Since that period the catalogue of Noctilucous animals has been 

 greatly enlarged, especially by Perou and LeSueur, the naturalists to 

 the French ' Voyages des Decouvertes auxTerres Australes.' A good 

 paper on the Luminousness of the Sea, by Mr. Macartney, appeared 

 in the ' London Phil. Trans.' for 1810, in which the phfenomenon is 

 ascribed entirely to living animals ; an opinion now generally em- 

 braced by naturalists. 



The author then detailed his own experiments and observations, 

 made from early life, in diflferent parts of the European Atlantic from 

 lat. 62° to 36° N., chiefly around the shores of Britain, all which 

 confirmed this opinion. 



He detected in 1814 several of the same noctilucous animals in 

 the waters of the Bay of Biscay as in our own seas, especially the 

 Noctiluca milinris, Orithya minima, and a very minute Crustacean, 

 seemingly a Zoe. 



Besides these, the Beroefulgens of Macartney, and several other 

 Medusaria, he found two very remarkable animals in the luminous 

 waters of the seas around the Western Isles of Scotland ; one an 

 JEquorea, most splendidly phosj)horescent, which seems to be ^quo- 



