During my last dredging cruise off the coast of Portu- 
gal, I enjoyed many opportunities of witnessing the 
brilliant and varied aspects under which such phospho- 
rescence exhibits itself, though instances more strictly 
parallel with those quoted in the two communications 
referred to, occurred, perhaps, while returning by steamer 
from Lisbon, after its expiration. 
On such favourable nights, as the vessel progressed 
through the waters, shoals of small fish might be seen 
darting away in every direction, themselves apparently 
luminous, and leaving behind them bright tracks of phos- 
phoric light, while now and then a fish of larger size 
would make its appearance, producing a similar effect, 
though of proportionately greater brilliancy. The coup 
@@il produced by their countless numbers was most mag- 
nificent, and in miniature vividly recalled to mind the 
meteoric showers that periodically illumine our summer 
nights. On all such occasions as the foregoing, the water 
when closely examined was invariably found to be literally 
teeming with JVocétiluca miliaris, its presence being 
manifest again in the broad track of phosphoric light 
visible for many hundred yards in the wake of the vessel, 
while the shaft of the screw was brilliantly illuminated by 
their countless numbers, excited into active display of 
their phosphoric properties by the rapid revolutions of its 
ponderous blades. 
Had Mr. Hall examined the “ globules of fatty matter” 
contained in the spray thrown on deck on the night he 
refers to, with the aid of the microscope, he would no 
doubt have traced the light to the same source, and 
discovered that each luminous point represented a single 
individual of the tiny rhizopod here mentioned. His 
hypothesis that they were possibly portions of “ fatty 
matter” thrown off by the fish themselves, seems scarcely 
tenable, and more particularly if we accept, as we are 
bound to, that the luminous tracks left behind as the fish 
swims onwards are attributable to alike origin, and which 
immediately suggests that such rapid desiccation would 
exercise as ruinous an effect upon the poor animals’ 
organisation as befell the celebrated racing pigeon of 
American notoriety, reported to have arrived at its desti- 
nation bereft of every feather, lost one by one through the 
friction attendant upon the high rate of speed at which the 
bird had travelled. 
In addition to Voctz/uca, innumerable other forms, such 
as minute Crustacea, Salpze, jelly-fish, &c., contribute 
towards the ocean’s nocturnal luminosity; but all these 
latter, and more especially the Salpze, for the most part 
display their light spontaneously, and are restricted to 
local and comparatively small areas of the ocean’s sur- 
face ; while in /Voctz/uca that luminosity is entirely latent, 
being dependent upon natural or artificial disturbance 
and excitement to bring it into action ; and though ex- 
ceedingly minute, the separate individuals rarely measur- 
ing the hundredth part of an inch in diameter, occur in 
such abundance that the whole surface of the sea is 
equally luminous when disturbed, being frequently so 
plentiful off our coasts that their aggregated bodies form 
a superficial crust of considerable thickness. Disturb- 
ance of the water at such times is immediately responded 
to by sheet-like flashes of luminosity, while any object 
passing through the water appears to be aglow itself, 
partly from the direct light, and partly from the reflected 
light produced by these microscopic protozoa. On the 
same principle the apparent luminosity of living fish is 
easily explained. Swimming through the water they 
necessarily disturb countless numbers of these living 
organisms, whose emitted light, actively scintillating for 
several seconds after the fish has passed, produces lumi- 
nous tracks wherever the fish may travel, while its own 
silvery scales borrow and throw back the earliest corus- 
cations it awakens in its onward course. 
W. SAVILLE KENT 
ng oi ; 
[Woo. 21, 187: 
THE FLORA OF THE QUANTOCKS* 
TRE geological formation and the historical associations — 
of the Quantock Hills have been abundantly investi- 
gated. Their natural productions, animal or vegetable, have 
not yet, so far as I know, been described or catalogued, — 
although they contain specimens in both branches of — 
Natural History singularly rare and souglft after, and — 
though more than one zoologist er botanist of note gazes — 
on them daily from the windows of his home. A paper 
whose conditions are that it should be light and popular, 
and that it should not exceed ten minutes in the delivery, — 
cannot throw much scientific light upon the plants of the 
most limited region ; but it may reveal sources of enjoy- 
ment and raise individual enthusiasm, and it may remind — 
this meeting that the time has possibly come, when our 
association should use the means at its command to en- 
courage the gradual creation of such a flora and fauna of - 
the county as no single naturalist, unassisted by a public 
body, can in any case trustworthily compile. 
In this beautiful valley, fat with the rich red soil that — 
countless millennia have seen washed down from the 
surrounding hills, the flora is everywhere so unusually rich 
as to win the envy and delight of strangers. It has been 
my lot to pilot botanists from all parts of England in 
search of local rarities ; and I have found their chief rap ~ 
tures given not to the uncommon flower they had come to 
see, but to the profusion of form and colour which includes ~ 
almost every English genus; manifest in the common 
turnpike roads which skirt the hills, but revealed in full 
perfection to those only who penetrate the interior of the 
range. In the sheltered lanes of the less wooded combes; 
in the road from Kilve to Parson’s farm, the foot path from _ 
the Castle of Comfort to Over Stowey, above all in the 
lane from the Bell inn to Aisholt, the hedge banks and the 
wide grass margins of the road are scarcely surpassed in 
beauty by the mosaic of a Swiss meadow or an Alpine 
slope. From the beginning tothe end of June the colours 
are blue and yellow ; the blue represented by the ground 
ivy, the germander speedwell, the brooklime, the late bugle 
and the early self-heal, the narrow-leaved flax, the long 
spikes of milkwort, and the varieties of the violet; the 
yellow by the birdsfoot trefoil large and small, the St. — 
John’s-wort, golden mugweed, and hop trefoil, the agri- 
mony, the yellow vetchling, and the countless kinds of 
hawkweed. Inthe hedges above are the mealtree and 
guelder rose, the madder, white campion and lady’s bed- 
straw, half hidden by the twining tendrils, white blossoms, 
and tiny cucumbers of the bryony; while here and there, 
where the hedge gives way to an old stone pit or deserted 
quarry, the tall foxglove and the great yellow mullein stand 
up, harmonious sisters, to fill the gap. By the middle of 
July the colours shift. The flora of early spring is gone: 
the milkwort shows its pods, the speedwelljits bushy leayes; 
the yellow still remains ; but the blue has given way to 
pink ; to the lovely musk mallow, the horehound, doves’ 
foot cranesbill, restharrow, painted cup, and calaminth. 
With August a third change arrives; the small short — 
clustering flowers are gone: instead of them we have the 
coarse straggling fleabanes, ragworts, and woodsage: the 
great blue trusses of the tufted vetch and the pure white 
trumpets of the bindweed take possession of the hedges ; 
the yellow sagittate leaves of the black bryony and the red 
berries of the mountain ash warn us that summer is past. 
Our September visit marks the closing scene. The flowers 
are few and far between ; but the ivy bloom is musical 
with bees, the hazels put forth clusters ruddy brown as 
those with which the satyr wooed the Faithful Shepherdess; 
the arum pushes its poisonous scarlet fruit between the 
mats of dying grass ; and the meadows which slope up- 
wards from the brooks are blue with the flowers of the 
colchicum. oi 
These are all common flowers, whose names and habits, 
* Read before the Somerset Archzeological/and!Natural History Society ~ 
September 12, 1872, 
