The Middlebury register and Addison County journal. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1883-1885, 1883-01-05


Times.
PhosphOrescent Phenomena on the New
England Coast.
On the New England coast, says a
writer in Harper, these displays of
phosphorescent phenomena are partic-
ularly noticeable, and the castellated
rocks are frequently bathed with their
splendors. When
" The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night
the phantoms of this world of light
spring into existence, changing the
bosom of the ocean to scene of weird
revelry. Every drop of water seems
a CLEAN of light. and the grim KEEPS
and sea-weeds depending from the
rocks drip with liquid fire. Ahead
of our boat waves of light appear; be-
meath the surface moon and stars
move here and there, revolving and
rising in graceful curves with gentle
undulation; while swift flashes, COM
ing from the gloom beyond, dart
across the field, leaving brilliant
nebulus train behind. The scene, as
the waves break upon the rocks, is one
of dazzling splendor. AT Spouting
Horn, Nahant, the water, forced
through natural crevice in the over
hanging crag, is thrown high in air,
for moment hangs suspended,
luminous mist then settles upon the
grim battlements, bathing them in a
warm, lambert light that winds its
way in cleaning rivulets to the sea.
But what are those mystic shapes?
In answer we dip the scoop-net into
the water; the wish of Midas is here
nigh-well fulfilled. The meshes be-
come shining web of golden fabric,
and entangled in them are myriads of
cleaning living creatures, the verita-
BILE lamps of the sea. They are medu-
s;e-jelly fishes, if you will-too COM
mon to be described; unsightly objects
when stranded upon the shore, but at
night possessed of loveliness pecu-
liarly their own. Large forms of au-
relia and cyanea move along sur
rounded by halo of golden-greenish
light. The cyanea is giant of its
kind, a fiery comet sweeping in and
out among the lesser mimic constella-
tions. One of these large jellies was
observed near Nantucket from
the mast of vessel moving
lazily along, its disk encircled by
halo twenty feet in diameter,
while the train of cleaning tentacles
stretched away 200 feet or more.
Mrs. Agassiz measured one whose disk
was seven feet across. with tentacles
over 112 feet in length. In the day
time the great semi-transparent disk.
with its flexible lobed margin, is
dark, reddish-brown color, while the
tentacles, bristling with lasso cells
and spiral darts, are yellow, purple,
brown or pink. While the cyaneas
tint the sea with greenish light, the
little dysmOrphosa. that at times APP
pears in vast numbers where currents
meet around rocky points, illumines it
with light of deep aurelian hue.
On successive nights we may find rs
many different varieties changing the
water to white and yellow tints.
The shapely zygodactyla wander
about like igneS:fatui; the idylia
CLEANS with ever-changing hues; pleu-
robrach@ fit about, their fringed ten
tacles glistening with red, green, yell
low and purple rays; the golden NELL
certa and respondent forms of coeyne,
TINA, clytia, eucope, and Il host of 9TH
ers, add to the glory of the scene. The
pleurobrachia and its relatives, from the
peculiar external character of their
locomotive appendages, are among the
most beautiful of all marine light
givers. The beroes are perhaps the
most familiar. assuming many forms,
sometimes spherical, oval and oblong.
Shaped MS bard's fancy shapes the small
balloon,
To bear some sylph or fay beyond the
moon.
From all her bands see lurid fringes play,
That glance and sparkle in the solar ray
With iridescent hues. Now round and
round
She whirls and twirls; now mounts, then
sinks profound"
Clear as crystal, they move through
the water by means of their lace-like
hyaline fins, that glitter with hues of
vivid irideScence. So numerous are
these and other light-givers in the
Northern seas that the olive-green
tint of the water is due to them even
in the daytime. Mr.. Scoresby, finding
sixty-four of them in cubic inch of
water, summed up the amusing cal
culation that if eighty thousand per
sons had commenced at the beginning
of the world Che refers to popular, not
geological reckoning) to count, they
would barely at the present time have
the enumeration of single
species found in cubic mile.-Har-
per's Magazine.