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time when a piece of the wood was put into a very small glass hermetically 
sealed, and it made no difference when this tube which contained the wood 
was put into an exhausted receiver. This he also observed with respect to a 
luminous fish, which he put into water, and placed in the same circumstances. 
He also found that the light of the shining fishes had other properties in com¬ 
mon with that of shining wood; but the latter, he says, was presently 
quenched with water, spirits of wine, a great variety of saline mixtures, and 
other fluids. Water, however, did not quench all the light of some shining 
veal on which he tried it, though spirit of wine destroyed its virtue presently. 
Mr. Boyle’s observation of light proceeding from fresh meat was quite 
casual. On the 15 th of February 1062 , one of his servants was greatly 
alarmed with the shining of some veal, which had been kept a few days, but 
had no bad smell, and was in a state very proper for use, The servant im¬ 
mediately made his master acquainted with this extraordinary appearance; 
and though he was then in bed, he ordered it to be immediately brought to 
him, and he examined it with the greatest attention* Suspecting that the state 
of the atmosphere had some share in the production of this phenomenon, he 
takes notice, after describing the appearance, that the wind was south¬ 
west and blustering, the air hot for the season, the moon was past its last 
quarter, and the mercury in the barometer was at 2Q 3 inches. 
Mr. Boyle was often disappointed in his experiments on shining fishes; 
finding that they did not always shine, in the very same circumstances, as 
far as he could judge, with others which had shined before. At one time that 
they failed to shine, according to his expectations, he observed that the 
weather was variable, and not without some days of frost and snow. In 
general he made use of whitings, finding them the fittest for his purpose. In 
a discourse, however, upon this subject at the Royal Society in 1681, it 
was asserted that of all fishy substances, the eggs of lobsters, after they had 
been boiled, shone the brightest. Olig. Jacoboeus observes, that upon open¬ 
ing a sea-polypus, it was so luminous, as to startle several persons who saw 
it; and he says that the more putrid the fish was, the more luminous it grew. 
The nails also, and the fingers of the persons who touched it, became lumi¬ 
nous ; and the black liquor which issued from the animal, and which is its 
bile, shone also, but with a more faint light. 
Mr. Boyle draws a very minute comparison between the light of burning 
coals and that of shining wood or fish, showing in what particulars they 
