heart-shaped beings, with a complex centre and a
network of branching filaments—beings with a
stalk, making them more than ever like
heart-shaped leaves, and each animal highly phosphorescent.
Then there are things like ornamented
spindles, with the threads flying; and things
like transparent beans; some like Florence
flasks standing on two legs, belted round the
middle, and filled with plums; some like a boy's
kite, with turnip-shaped excrescences; and
others like steel traps, with teeth set in a row
below; some like hairy mushrooms, with roots
and streamers; some like fantastic cucumbers;
some plumy like rushes, and others feathery like
birds; many, and of all forms and classes; so
many, indeed, that, in 1854, the phosphorescent
marine animals then known, were upwards of a
hundred distinct species; and the number has
increased since then. But, unlike the herring
and the mackerel, and other fish, which become
luminous only when dead and decaying, these
invertebrate light-bearers are luminous only when
living; the phosphoric substance—which can
be collected, according to the testimony by
experience of MM. Edoux and Soulezet, and
which is yellowish, viscous, and soluble in water
—losing its luminosity after it has been separated
for a few moments from the body of the animal.
Common earthworms—the lumbrices according
to science—are known now to be phosphorescent,
though a fierce dispute was once waged
on that question; some naturalists declaring
that the crawling things which left a trail of
light behind them on the garden-path in warm,
dry, summer evenings, were not earthworms,
but centipedes, scolopendræ; but the fact is
pretty firmly established now that earthworms
as well as centipedes are luminous, and that
centipedes are only luminous after exposure to
the sun, though earthworms are often turned up
out of manure-heaps shining and phosphorescent.
A most singular and important fact; if, indeed,
it is an absolute fact, and not a mere fancy of
the observation. Other insects, too, are
phosphorescent. The glow-worm—lampyris; the fire-fly
—elater; the Chinese lantern-fly—fulgora; will
occur to the mind of everyone as the typical forms
of insect luminousness; but the curious Passus
sphœrocerus, which bears its two lanterns on its
horns like gig-lamps, is less known; and that the
eyes of the Noctua psi, a little grey night-moth,
marked with the Greek character ψ on its wings;
the eyes of the silkworm-moth, Bombyx cossus;
some caterpillars; our old British friend the
daddy-longlegs, under rare circumstances; and
some beetles of indigestible names and horny
bodies—that all these are phosphoric and
luminous is a fact known only to the more careful
observers. The eyes of beasts have often strange
lights within and behind them. Some monkeys
have phosphorescent eyes; and Dr. Phipson
speaks of one man, only one, whose eyes emitted
a metallic pink light, something like the green
shine of a dog's eyes; but the same kind of
thing has been seen with others of frail and
remarkable constitutions. Dr. Kane mentions in
his journal a curious case of phosphorescence
covering the metallic parts of a pistol, as well
as the hands of himself and his friend Petersen,
then holding it. It was intensely cold at the
time, and the atmosphere was highly electric;
and then came the phosphorescence of the metal
and of their own living flesh, as bright and steady
as a glow-worm's light, showing every mark
and crease of the skin, and the whole length of
the pistol; enabling them to see what they were
about in that desolate hut; helping them to get
a flame, upon which their salvation depended.

Strange phosphoric appearances have been
seen in the dying and diseased. A pale
moonlight-coloured glimmer was seen playing round
the head of a dying girl about an hour and a
half before her last breath. The light
proceeded from her head, and was faint and tremulous
like the reflexion of summer lightning, which
at first, those watching her, mistook it to be.
The story is told by Marsh in his Essay on the
Evolution of Light from the Living Subject.
Another case reported by a medical man in
Ireland, was that of a consumptive patient, in
whose cabin strange lights had been seen, filling
the neighbourhood with alarm. The medical
man, Dr. Donovan, went to the cabin and
watched, and out of fourteen nights succeeded
in three; once seeing a luminous fog like the
Aurora Borealis round the man, and twice
"scintillations, like the sparkling phosphorescence
exhibited by sea infusoria." He vouches for
the truth of what he saw, and the absence of
all imposture. A third instance was that of an
Italian woman at Milan lying dangerously ill
(she did not die, as it turned out), who gave off
a phosphoric flame which avoided the hand when
carried against it, and was finally dispersed by
a current of air. And have not phosphoric
lights been seen in hospitals upon wounds, upon
dead and decaying flesh in dissecting-rooms,
and in butchers' shops? Boyle's famous neck
of veal, which had more than twenty
phosphorescent places in it, is one of the most striking
instances on record; but Dr. Phipson gives
others, which the curious may read for
themselves. At all events, the fact is proved that
dead flesh before decaying may become
phosphorescent, and that even the living flesh when
diseased, or before death, or when hurt as in
wounds, can also be luminous. But the subject
is in its infancy yet, and even Dr. Phipson, who
knows more about it than any other living man,
does not always know where to draw the line
between electricity and phosphorescence, or to
determine which is which, or what is either.

MY COUNTRY-HOUSE IN PERSIA.

I AM living in a garden. My companions are
birds, and trees, and flowers. I know them all
intimately, and they are all quick with the
delicious airy life of fairyland. I know the talking-bird,
who seems to discourse to me of worlds
invisible, telling me to be content with the great
joy of living. Perhaps he has brought his sweet
grave talk from some unseen paradise, which
human eyes are not yet blessed enough to