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THE PHOSPHORESCENCE OP THE SEA. 
BY A. DE QUATREPAGES, MEMBER OP THE INSTITUTE OP PRANCE, 
PROPESSOR AT THE MUSEUM AT PARIS, 
TRANSLATED (WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES) BY THE EDITOR. 
O E all the interesting, marvellous, or fantastic spectacles 
presented by the sea, one of the most remarkable is, 
undoubtedly, that phosphorescence in which the opposing ele- 
ments par excellence, fire and water, appear to be blended in 
intimate association. 
Prom time immemorial, too, it has arrested the attention and 
vividly excited the imagination of those who were enabled to 
observe it on a sufficiently extensive scale. There never was a 
sailor who, in transcribing the narrative of his wanderings, has 
failed to comment upon those intertropical seas in which phos- 
phorescence is revealed in all its splendour, and where the vessel 
seems to plough its way through one vast sheet of flame, leaving 
behind it a fiery track ; whilst the great zoophytes and mollusca, 
united in colonies and rolhng beneath the waves, suggest to the 
observer the idea of glowing cannon-balls or masses of incan- 
descent metal. 
But is it not possible that some little exaggeration may have 
crept into the descriptions of these brilliant tableaux ? 
One would fain be tempted to believe so ; and yet the reality, 
as it may be observed even in our temperate seas, induces me to 
give credence to the testimony of these eye-witnesses. But not 
having had the opportunity of looking upon the phenomenon 
developed to perfection, and only desiring to speak of what I 
myself witnessed, it is my intention, in the present paper, to 
restrict myself to an account of some of my own observations, 
and of some experiments that I have undertaken in order to 
become satisfied concerning the cause of marine phosphorescence, 
as exhibited in our great European harbours. 
1. Description op the Phenomenon. 
Most of the authors who have applied themselves to the 
study of marine phosphorescence, have treated only of what 
may be termed diffused or general phosphorescence. In this 
no. in. u 
