128 THE HAUNTS OF LIFE 
ever was given to man to admire. Every 
point of the chief branches and twigs of the 
coral Isis threw out brilliant jets of fire, now 
paling, now reviving again, to pass from 
violet to purple, from red to orange, from 
bluish to different tones of green, and some- 
times to the white of over-heated iron. The 
pervading colour, however, was greenish; the 
others appeared only in transient flashes, and 
melted into the green again. Minute by 
minute the glory lessened, as the animals died, 
and at the end of a quarter of an hour they 
were all like dead and withered branches.” 
But while they were at their best “one could 
read by their light the finest print in a news- 
paper at a distance of 6 yards.” 
In the case just described, the light was 
apparently given off from the whole of the 
living matter covering the limy skeleton, but 
very often it comes from particular spots or 
“light organs.” One cuttlefish has about 
twenty of these luminous spots, “like gleam- 
ing jewels, ultra-marine, ruby-red, sky-blue, 
and silvery,” and another has minute light- 
giving points dotted all over its body. 
Fishes often have these light-giving spots, 
and we are told of one fish which has two 
