LIVING LAMPS OF THE OCEAN.

Lake County Press, Issue 2134, 6 September 1906, Page 6

LIVING LAMPS OF THE OCEAN.

l>eep down among the dim and silent paths of the sea there has wound ceaselessly about its business from the beginning of animal life a population of some of the strangest bein all the census-roll of creation. Science has only now become aware of these wonderful organisms, and only some three or four men in all the world have yet seen them in their gilors , the living lamps of the ocean. A few months ago Dr. C. Joubin, I'resident of the Zoological Society of France and professor of malacologie of the Paris Museum of Natural History, went sailing the seas with a distinguished confrere, tho Prince of Monaco. The Prince, a fervent student and discoverer in oceanography, has a yacht unique in the - world, such as onlly the rarest of beings, a millionaire .scientist, is likely to have. It is tit once a palace, n museum and library of science a laboratory for studious research, and a deep-sea dredger. One night while the yacht was drifting leisurely somewhere between the Azores' and the Canaries there came into sight on the still wafers a great luminous mass that, gambolled about, the ship like some phosphorescent porpoise. "Its light was almost blinding," said Dr. Joubin. "I am sure you could have read a newspaper by it, had il been stationary. It was an intense radiance of pah- blue colour, very beautiful, brilliant yet soft. For a moment we could only enjoy and wonder. Then, the scientific spirit coming uppermost, we made a swift throw at_ it with a net. In the twinkling of an eye the creature shut oIT its lights and disappeared." This gorgeous animal, says Dr. Joubin, was a large ccphalopod, thai is. a member of the species of sea-dwelling creatures of the octopus and cuttlefish persuasion, which, a.s Ihe Greek name indicates, have their organs of locomotion set about tinhead. The light seemed to stream from about the abdominal region. How intense the luminous emanation may be is shown, a.s Dr. Joubin points out, by the extraordinary fact that quite recently a (Jerman savant Chun, succeeded in bringing up alive and glowing a cephalopod from the greater depths, and photographed his prize in the darkness by its own light. Chun has given to this creature the name of Thauinatolampas—the wonderful lamp. The proof of the photograph shows radiant specks very brilliant, .regularly and symmetrically disposed over the body and tentacles, making the belly surface one steady, powerful radiance. Dr. Joubin, and after him other scientists, base discovered and studied many different specimens of luminous ceplialopods : the more they handtle the more wonders they find. The figure of the Hist ioteuthis Kuppelli, or that of Hist iot eut his Monellina. shows the body speckled with little dots set regularly over the skin and forming a crown round I the eyes. These little specks are marvellously wrought apparatus. Cnder i he microscope an; one of the specks is seen to be composed of two main parts. The figure represents the speck magnified fifteen times We have above an oval, brilliant, of a bluish-grey tint, with something of the. effect of mother-of-pearl ; the under part is egg-shaped, almost spherical, brown. or black in colour, and infixed firmly into the cutaneous tissues. With a still .greater microscopic power this dark, pearl-like (deject is seen lo be lopped by a transparent cap, which acts as a lens. condensing the luminous rays as they issue from the tiny sphere in which j they, take their rise ami projecting them partly outside of'the apparatus partly upon the oval above. The oval acts as a mirror, throwing tinrays that impinge upon it. mil intensified. I'nderneath the lens, in the lower sphere which we base called the dark pearl, I here is again a complex structure. firstly, the whole sphere is covered with a black laser, so thai only the lens-cap mas' .allow the light rays to pass ; second- j rlv. we have within the chirk chamber so formed a thick mass of very curious crystalline cellules in the form of i transparent plates placed one upon [another, which, lining shrouded ail I j round by Lire exterior black covering, form a mirror ssithin the sphere or .pearl and plas the part, of a silvered reflector. Thirdly, there is a layer j of cylindric cells similar to the retina j of the eye; the transparent, elements of these cellules produce the light. Fourthly, the centre of the apparatus is filled with a transparent (glassy) tissue ill the shape of a cone pointing downward. Fifthly, we have a •lower lens fixed into the upper one already mentioned, so that, there are two lenses, one concavo-convex and the other bi-convex, together conconstituting an achromatic system. Thus a ray emitted by the light-pro-ducing medium is reflected by the inner mirror outward lo the greater ' jrprror through the tissue-cone and i ■the two-fold ilens. This greater mirror, oval and con- j .case, is formed by a great number of parallel planes. It plays a double j part; it throws out the rays engendered in the apparatus beneath and Jlung up against it. ; and by its own direct, contact with the lens it. directly takes of the light (not merel.v indirectly as the rays impinge upon ji ) and glows throughout aHI its jlhickness ; the superimposed plates take fire, as it were, and the effect, to use Dr. Joubin's appropriately luminous comparison, is a phenomenon similar to that of the luminous T(o>ntain. cephalopod does not shine perpetually," said Dr. Joubin ; "that would imply too great consumption of energy. tint it is also fairly certain that the lanterns can light up automatically. Ii in "in darkness of the greater depths of the sea a lis ing prey natural t o the cephalopod chances by. the cephalopod's organism is impressed l>; the beat vibrations emitted, however feebly, by any living being. These vibrations are gathered in, so to sjteak, by lie oval exterior mirror juift by it I ram-mil led into the lightproducing sphere, causing bv rellcx action t he shoot ing out of I he lumiii otIS rays. 'thus the sea is lit around Ihe cephalopod, vsho sees and pollli <es upon his prey. \ heal ray from the pres has caused Uie emission of the tight bv which he is lo m.-el his doom . I he hunt er of t in- deep is n tit omul ball;. advised ol I he ap proach of his meal l>.s the emission of ihe light with which he is lo catch it, "Another cephalopod." says the aavanl zoologist, "of which I have only just completed the study,, wears in us. es.-. set in the very globe of (.lie eye, rax translucent find very brilliant pc-ills, each of wiucit, on

examination under the microscope, shows itself different from everv other, and consequent Is must he sup posed to wrvc a different purpose." The light emitted h,v those animals is by no means of uniform tint. It is possible that those rays emitted from tlw generator an' identical, but are. niodilied by their refraction from the mirror or hs meretl.v traversing its "mot hcr-of-peni 1" plates. It is certain that in the case of some of tho ceplialopods the light rays are coloured by their transmission through a sort, of coloured translucent membrane or tissue stretched in starry form about or around the rim of the light-producing, sphere. These star-shaped colour producers (chromat ophores) are very complicated organs : they are entirely within the will-control of the proprietors the.s can colour their lights at choice reds, blues, greens, yellows. lilacs. j purples—all colours are seen ;it is 'a question of opening or shutting this or that set of the numbeitlcss I organs of light at their disposal. ,On what principle I o what pan i- ' cnlar purpose, do I he\ decide now for opening, now for shutting? j Dr. Joubin owns, their tires dulled in spirits, a firt of ceplialopods ugly and uninteresting looking beasts .their amazing lighting equipment showing in minute specks. j '"Priceless !" he remarks. "How many do you suppose there are in I the whole of the upper world '.' \ j dozen at most . Vel for ages the j deeps are full of t hem. radiant wit hj 1 Lhem. These are the marvellous ; living lamps of the sea. I toes not ; the sea become a fairyland when you I think of it '.'" Their first and obvious purpose is j for the capturing of their prey. Ij.VI ing in the perpetual darkness of the j sen at great depths, Lhey, await a victim. At his near approach he is j startled, if not half stunned, by the brilliant, animal searchlight's sudden blaze, and is quickly enwrapped by the cephalopod's powerlul itrms. It may also be that the searchlight is used, as a bait to attract the smaller creatures as a lamp attracts insects and fish. A third purpose would naturally be the attracting of the other sex of the same species, and it is thought probable that a regular system of identification signals exist among these strange creatures of a strange world. While there is no mention of lightgiving ceplialopods in any of the natural histories it is believed that one such creature was found about j ninety years ago by a Frenchman. , He claimed that he had seen a sea j creature that gave out wonderful; iridescent rays and exhibited ids cap- j lure. lint it was then dead and i lightk-ss and his story was laughed | at and universally discredited. "- "New York World."