e
extraordinary phenomenon. In the first place, I satisfied myself
beyond question, that the radiance was phosphorescent and not
electrical, although it simulated the light of the aurora in the
rapidity of its movements of translation from one area to another.
When it flashed around the ship the second time, I got down close to
the luminous surface and discovered that what seemed, from the deck,
to be a mantle of bluish fire was, in reality, a layer of water
closely packed with fine bright spangles. It looked like water in
which luminous sand was constantly being stirred or churned up. The
points of light were so numerous that, at a distance of ten or twelve
feet, the eye failed to notice that there was any dark water in
the interspaces, and received merely an impression of diffused and
unbroken radiance.

In the second place, I became convinced that the myriads of
microscopic organisms which pervaded the water did not light up
their tiny lamps in response to a mechanical shock, such as would be
produced by agitation of the medium in which they floated. There was
no breeze, at any time, nor was there the faintest indication of
a ripple on the glassy surface of the sea. Between the flashes of
phosphorescence, the polished mirror of dark water was not blurred by
so much as a breath. The sudden lighting up of myriads of infusorial
lamps over vast areas of unruffled water was not due, therefore, to
mechanical agitation, and must have had some other and more subtle
cause. What the nature was of the impulse that stimulated whole square
miles of floating protoplasm into luminous activity so suddenly as
to produce the visual impression of an electric flash, I could not
conjecture. The officers of the U. S. revenue cutter _McCulloch_
observed and recorded in Bering Sea, in August, 1898, a display of
phosphorescence which was almost as remarkable as the one I am trying
to describe [Footnote: _N.Y. Sun_, Nov. 11 1899.]; but in that case
the sea was rough; there were no sudden flashes of appearance and
disappearance; and the excitation of the light-bearing organisms may
have been due--and probably was due--to mechanical shock.

In the third place, I observed that in the intervals between the
flashes, when the water was dark, all objects immersed in that water
were luminous. The ship's copper was so bright that I could count
every tack and seam; the rudder was lighted to its lowest pintle; and
medusae, or jelly-fish, drifting pas