250 The Poets and Nature. 



into a quart of water made the whole so luminous that cards 

 could be comfortably played by its light. One night in a 

 phosphorescent sea a ship's crew beheld a water-spout as a 

 moving pillar of solid fire. Sir Wyville Thompson dredged 

 up from 600 fathoms mud that was like pure gold. A haul of 

 starfishes off the Shetlands flashed like brilliants in the nets. 

 Boats have rowed for miles over green lambent flames, a 

 forest of the luminous sea-pens. On the Patagonian coast, 

 after a storm, virgularia lay heaped so high on the beach that 

 at a distance it seemed as if the watch-fires of an army were 

 burning all along the shore. Off Somerstown for a week 

 together some disturbance drove the creatures of the depths 

 to the surface, and the crew of a vessel lying there read at 

 the portholes all night through. Holden tells us of wondrous 

 displays in the Southern Seas how, "drifting over coral 

 reefs, he saw the bottom studded with gleaming gems, yellow 

 and purple gorgonias bathed in soft lights, which, when lifted 

 to the surface, illuminated all about them with a mild radiance; 

 flashes of light came and went, appearing again in the distant 

 depths like spectres; the silver sand, turning over on the 

 oar that disturbed it, flashing with sparks of living light ; 

 processions went winding by, breaking up, and reforming in 

 aggregations of light, nebulae of breathing stars." Humbolt, 

 passing through a zone of pyrosomas in the Gulf Stream, 

 could distinguish by their light far down below the surface 

 the forms of dolphins and other fishes, thrown up in strong 

 relief against the gleaming myriads. Naturalists have again 

 and again written down the descriptions of these creatures 

 by their own light. Off the Mauritius amazing scenes have 

 been beheld, especially after violent storms. Moseley 

 captured a pyrosoma four feet long, which when touched 

 glowed like metal at a white heat, and flashed for hours 

 afterwards in brilliant colours, as if chemicals were being 

 thrown on a molten surface. 



But enough of facts. These few suffice, however, to show 



