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Show ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 261 ( 5) p. 229.-"Shine like stars." The luminosity of the ocean is one of those superb natural phenomena which continues to excite our admiration even when we have seen them recur every night for months. The sea is phosphorescent in every zone; but those who have not witnessed the phenomenon within the tropics, and especially in the Pacific, have only an imperfect idea of the grand and majestic spectacle which it affords. When a man-of-war, impelled by a fresh breeze, cuts the foaming waves, the voyager standing at the ship's side feels as if he could never be satisfied with gazing on the spectacle which presents itself to his view. Every time that in the rolling of the vessel her side emerges from the water, blue or reddish streams of light appear to dart upwards like flashes of lightning from her keel. Nor can I describe the splendor of the appearance presented on a dark night in the tropic seas by the sports of a troop of porpoises. As they cut through the foaming waves, following each other in long winding lines, one sees their· mazy track marked by intense and sparkling light. In the Gulf of Cariaco, between Oumana and the Peninsula of Maniquarez, I have stood for hours enjoying this spectacle. Le Gentil and the elder Forster attributed the flashing to the electric friction excited by the ship in moving through the water, but the present state of our knowledge does not permit us to receive this as a valid explanation. (Joh. Reinh. Forster's Bemerkungen auf seiner Reise um die Welt, 1783, s. 57; Le Gentil, Voyage dans les Mers de l'Inde, 1779, t. i. pp. 685-698.) Perhaps there are few natural subjects of observation which have been so long and so much debated as the luminosity of the waters of the sea. What we know with certainty on the subject may be reduced to the following simple facts. There are several luminous animals which, when alive, give out at pleasure a faint phosphoric light: this light is, in most instances, rather bluish, as in N ereis noctiluca, Medusa pelagica var. {3 (Forskal, Fauna .lEgyptiacoarabica, s. Descriptiones animalium qure in itinere orientali observavit, 177 5, p. 109), and in the Monophora noctiluca, discovered in Baudin's expedition, (Bory de St. Vincent, Voyage dans les Des des Mers d' Afrique, 1804, t. i. p. 107, pl. vi.) The luminous |