32 SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS [Bri 



fighting must attract the attention of strong enemies. Those 

 enemies, of course, bide their time ; and when proud braggarts 

 are utterly engrossed in their fightings, they make them an 

 easy prey. Emperors and grouse are equally fated when they 

 assume the character of the braggadocio. ND. 



Bright Tints in Unexpected Places. 



The bright and the beautiful often arrest our attention, where 

 we should not have expected to have discovered them. Take 

 colours, for example. All transparent bodies, solids, liquids, or 

 gases, when in sufficiently fine laminae, appear coloured in very 

 bright tints, especially by reflection. Crystals which cleave 

 easily, and can be obtained in very thin plates, such as mica and 

 selenite, show this phenomenon, which is also well seen in 

 mother-of-pearl and in soap bubbles. A drop of oil, unattractive 

 enough in its own appearance, when spread rapidly over a large 

 sheet of water, exhibits all the colours of the spectra in a con- 

 stant order. Even a soap's bubble, when it is blown out, is 

 brilliant and iridescent. 



Brightness in Combination with Impurity. 



The illuminating power of phosphorus appears due to an 

 extremely slow chemical reaction, and it is affirmed that 

 vegetable and animal substances may grow phosphorescent at a 

 certain stage of decomposition, or even without any appearance 

 of putrefaction. Accredited authorities cite a host of examples 

 of fresh or stale meats which have been seen to shine during 

 the night with a more or less vivid clearness. Fish, and 

 especially salt-water fish, when no longer fresh, acquire a 

 phosphorescence which brightens during the first period of 

 putrefaction. Leave for two or three days dead salt-water fish 

 in non-luminous sea water ; at the end of that time the water 

 will be covered with a thin pellicle of fatty matter, and will 

 soon become phosphorescent. But it is not only in material 

 nature that we thus find brightness in combination with im- 

 purity. Genius itself has been found shining amidst moral 

 putrefaction. When so found its light is ephemeral and phos- 



