On the Phosphorescence of Marine Invertebrata. 197 
experiments undertaken and varied by Matteucci,* with all the 
soma furnished. by experimental science at the present day, 
ve, we think, no room for doubt. In the insect which he ex- 
amined, the light was produced by an actual slow combustion 
analogous to that of phosphorus exposed to the air. 'This light 
is extinguished in a vacuum and in the irrespirable gases; it re- 
appears by contact with atmospheric air; it is sensibly brightened 
in pure oxygen ; it continues in animals after they are dead, or 
even cut to pieces. The particular substance from which it em- 
anates may be isolated, and may leave upon the fingers or the dis- 
secting instrument a luminous streak which disappears only on 
drying ; a little dampness even, in certain cases, is sufficient to 
testore the phosphorescence; finally, the production of this light is 
accompanied in the living animal, as well as in its dead carcass, 
by the escape of carbonic acid. Everything concurs then to 
Tt 
4 Very different opinion has been set forth by M. Gilbert, an 
Officer of the corps of naval engineers, who without being aware 
of the investigations of others on this subject, had seen the Noc- 
tilucee and describes them rather coarsely but in a manner easily 
;cognized. He explains the production of light in these animals 
Mt the development of electricity from the surface of their bod- 
ies, a development brought out by the action of the waves.{ 
This explanation is evidently untenable even in a merely physi- 
cal point of view, 
~€sson appears to us one of the first, if. not the first, who has 
Seen in Phosphorescence a phenomenon distinct from the physico- 
A i af ho enema 2 acy des corps suger on, 
Ysiologie compar ii Montpellier, 1 
+ Annales Maritimes, 1817 
Szrims, Vol. XV, No. 44.—March, 1853. 26 
