FOOT — ON ANIMAL LUMINOSITF. 41 



tention were directed specially to the subject these animals would bo 

 found to reproduce as rapidly in Ireland as they have done in England, 

 France, Belgium, and elsewhere. They exhibit an extraordinary power 

 of resisting cold. At Paris one lived for several years in the open air, 

 refusing the shelter provided for it, and sleeping in winter half covered 

 with snow, protected by its impenetrable fleece of feathers. Its flesh, 

 according to M. Prevost, who forms a more favorable opinion of it than 

 travellers have done, would be valuable as butcher's meat, as the thigh 

 of an Emeu may weigh more than twenty-two pounds, and the Imperial 

 Acclimatisation Society have marked their appreciation of the value of 

 these hardy birds by offering a medal of fifteen hundred francs for their 

 successful domestication. 



Dr. Aethus Wynne Foot then read the following: — 



Notes on Animal Luminosity. 



My object in bringing the subject of animal luminosity under the 

 notice of the members of the Natural History Society, is not to lay be- 

 fore them any recent personal observations, but to entertain them with 

 a resume, though a very imperfect one, of some of the principal facts 

 which have been ascertained in the investigation of this subject. In 

 studying any phenomenon of wide distribution in nature, it is well 

 from time to time to pause and review the work that has been accom- 

 plished in the past, in order to ascertain the proper starting point 

 whence future inquiries should be instituted, otherwise observations 

 may be recorded and statements reiterated as novel which a little re- 

 search into the literature of the subject would have shown to have been 

 long forestalled by previous and perhaps forgotten authors. In so large 

 a field of study as that which the subject of animal luminosity affords, 

 and in which so many are working, unknown sometimes to each other, it is 

 quite possible that some of the labourers may not be aware of the amount 

 of work which others with superior advantages may have accomplished, 

 and hence the utility is obvious of now and then taking stock, as it 

 were, of progress, and of seeing how far the work has been advanced by 

 the conjoined exertions of all, great and small, concerned in the task. 

 The subject is one which can hardly fail to arrest the attention, if not 

 to interest, all who are concerned with any branch of natural science ; 

 the labour of its study is divided amongst the botanist, the mineralo- 

 gist, the zoologist, the anatomist, and the student of physics, and by 

 their friendly co-operation vastly greater and more useful results are 

 attainable than by single-handed exertion, even though Titanic, Time 

 and a due regard for the feelings of the audience will prevent me from 

 going into anything like a minute consideration of the subject, and will 

 only permit of reference to its salient points, and I earnestly crave in- 

 dulgence if the remarks made appear desultory, as they can hardly fail 

 to do from the hasty manner in which they have been put together. 

 The term luminosity has been chosen in preference to the more usual 



