294 NATURE AND WOODCRAFT. 



fessor Martin Duncan : " Great domes of pale 

 gold with long streamers, move slowly along in 

 endless succession; small silvery discs swim, 

 now enlarging and now contracting, and here 

 and there a green or bluish gleam marks the 

 course of a tiny, but rapidly rising and sinking 

 globe. Hour after hour the procession passes 

 by, and the fishermen hauling in their nets 

 from the midst drag out liquid lights, and the 

 soft sea jellies, crushed and torn piecemeal, 

 shine in every clinging particle. The night 

 grows dark, the wind rises and is cold, and the 

 tide changes ; so does the luminosity of the sea. 

 The pale spectres sink deeper and are lost to 

 sight, but the increasing waves are tinged here 

 and there with green and white, and often 

 along a line, where the fresh water is mixing 

 with the salt in an estuary, there is brightness 

 so intense that boats and shores are visible. 

 But if such sights are seen on the surface, what 

 must not be the phosphorescence of the depths ? 

 Every sea-pen is glorious in its light; in fact, 

 nearly every eight-armed Aleyoriarian is thus 

 resplendent, and the social Pyrosoma, bulky 

 and a free swimmer, glows like a bar of hot 

 metal with a white and green radiance." 



