424 THE INHABITANTS OF THE SEA. 



lion, island, Saint George, to Unalaschka, Chamisso admired as 

 beautiful a phosphorescence of the ocean as he had ever witnessed 

 in the tropical seas. Sparks of light, remaining attached to the 

 sails that had been wetted by the spray, continued to glow in 

 another element. Near the south point of Kamtschatka, at a 

 water-temperature hardly above freezing point, Ermann saw 

 the sea no less luminous than during a seven months' sojourn in 

 the tropical ocean. This distinguished traveller positively 

 denies that warmth decidedly favours the luminosity of the sea. 



At Cape Colborn, one of the desolate promontories of the deso 

 late Victoria Land, the phosphoric gleaming of the waves on 

 the 6th September, when darkness closed in, was so intense that 

 Simpson assures us he had seldom seen anything more brilliant. 

 The boats seemed to cleave a flood of molten silver, and the spray 

 dashed from their bows, before the fresh breeze, fell back in 

 glittering showers into the deep. 



Mr. Charles Darwin paints in vivid colours the magnificent 

 spectacle presented by the sea, while sailing in the latitudes 

 of Cape Horn on a very dark night. 



There was a fresh breeze, and every part of the surface, which 

 during the day is seen as foam, now glowed with a pale light. 

 The vessel drove before her bows two billows of liquid phospho- 

 rus, and in her wake she was followed by a milky train. As far 

 as the eye reached, the crest of every wave was bright, and the 

 sky above the horizon, from the reflected glare of these livid 

 flames, was not so utterly obscure as over the rest of the 

 heavens. 



While " La Venus " was at anchor before Simon's Town, the 

 breaking of the waves produced so strong a light that the room 

 in which the naturalists of the expedition were seated was 

 illumined as by sudden flashes of lightning. Although more 

 than fifty paces from the beach where the phenomenon took place, 

 they tried to read by this wondrous oceanic light, but the 

 successive glimpses were of too short duration to gratify their 

 wishes. 



Thus we see the same nocturnal splendour which shines forth 

 in the tropical seas, and gleams along our shores, burst forth 

 from the arctic waters, and from the waves that bathe the 

 southern promontories of the old and the new worlds. 



But what is the cause of the beautiful phenomenon so widely 



