X Arc RE XOTES 
S2 
India. The explorer, having been compelled by a storm to 
take shelter at night under a mass of rock in the jungle, was 
astonished to see a blaze of phosphoric light over all the grass 
in the vicinity. This unnamed plant abounds in the jungles 
near the foot of the hills in the Madura district. 
The writer advises gardeners to be on the look out for this 
curious phenomenon, and to examine all such rhizomes as they 
may have in their possession in the hope of finding it ; for 
assuredly they would hardly hit upon a thing of more than 
ordinary interest. Plants habitually luminous, and constantly so 
at night, would form quite a new feature in our gardens, and are 
well worth any degree of trouble that may attend their discovery. 
It must be observed that the above instances of luminance 
refer only to the living and healthy organism, and are inde- 
pendent of that phosphorescence which is often exhibited during 
the decomposition of vegetable matter. That this light may 
sometimes depend upon phosphoric excretion is very likely, as 
it has been found that the parts emitting it are the most luminous 
when immersed in pure oxygen, and cease to emit when excluded 
from that element. This is precisely what would take place 
with a stick of phosphorus, and it may be that at certain seasons 
phosphoric substances are taken up from the soil by the grow- 
ing vegetable, and excreted under those conditions of warmth, 
moisture, and atmospheric influence above alluded to. It is 
equally evident, if observers are not mistaken as to the scin- 
tillating nature of the light occasionally emitted, that there must 
be some other cause than phosphorescence, and to no agency 
can it with more likelihood be ascribed than to electricity. The 
earth and atmosphere are often in different electric states, and 
when so the leaves and spikelets of vegetables would afford the 
most prominent points for the elimination of the passing fluid. 
Let us turn next to luminance in animals — a phenomenon 
which has been observed and commented on from the earliest 
times of natural history. And here, again, we throw out of view 
those instances of phosphorescence wdiich arise from decomposi- 
tion, and which have been observed over the spots where animals 
are buried, or on their bodies even before death, as in cases of 
human tuberculosis. 
As in the vegetable, so in the animal kingdom, luminance is 
a rare and somewhat irregular phenomenon, appearing not in 
the higher and more perfect races, but chiefly m the obscure 
and least important. The most vivid, perhaps, of all luminous 
creatures is the lantern-fly of the Tropics — the Fulgora lanteruaria 
of Linnaeus — which attains a length of three or four inches. 
It affords a light so great, that travellers walking by night are 
said to be enabled to pursue their journey with sufficient cer- 
tainty if they tie one or two of them to a stick, and carry this 
before them in the manner of a torch. 
Next in order comes the less luminous, but more familiar, 
fire-fly or glow-worm — Lampyvis noctiluca. In this genus, the 
