LIVING LAMPS OF THE OCEAN.

Lake County Press, Issue 2134, 6 September 1906, Page 7

LIVING LAMPS OF THE OCEAN.

Deep down among the dim and silent paths of the sea there has wound ceaselessly about its business from tho beginning of animal life a population of some of the strangest bein£| in 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 gtlory, the living lamps of the ocean. A.few months ago Dr. L. Joubin, President of the Zoological Society of France and professor of malacologic of the Paris Museum of Natural History, went sailing the seas with a distinguished confrere, the 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 at once a palace, a 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 ou the still waters a great luminous mass that gamboled 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 it been stationary. It was an intense radiance of pale 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 off its lights and disappeared." This gorgeous animal, says Dr. Joubin, was a large ccphalopod, that is. a member of the species of sea-dwelling creatures of the octopus and cuttlefish persuasion, which, as the Greek name indicates, have their organs of locomotion set about the head. The light seemed to stream from about the abdominal region. How intense the luminous emanation may be is shown, as Dr. Joubin points out, by the extraordinary fact that quite recently a German 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 Thaumatolampas—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 hi in other scientists, have discovered and studied many different specimens of luminous ceplialopods ; the more they hanrillc the more wonders they find.

Tlie figure 01 1 the Histiotcuthis Kiippclli, or that of Histiotcuthis BoneUina, shows the body speckled with little dots set regularly over the skin and forming a crown round the eyes. These little specks are marvellously wrought apparatus. Under the microscope any 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, red or black in colour, and infixed firmly into the cutaneous tissues. With a still greater micros scopic power this dark, pearl-like object is seen to be topped by a transparent cap, which acts as a lens, condensing the luminous rays as they issue from the tiny sphere in which they, take their rise and projecting them partly outside of'thc apparatus partly upon the oval above. The. oval acts as a mirror, throwing the rays that impinge upon it out intensified. Underneath the lens, in the lower sphere which we have called the dark pearl, there is again a complex structure. Firstly, the whole sphere is covered with a black layer, so that only the lens-cap may .allow the light rays to pass ; secondfly, we have within the dark chamber so formed a I hick mass of very curious crystalline cellules in the form of transparent plates placed one upon [another, which, being shrouded all I round by the exterior black covering, form a mirror within the sphere or ,pearl and play tlie part of a silvered reflector. Thirdly, there, is a layer of cylindric cells similar to the retina, 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 in 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-convcx, together conconstituting an achromatic system. Thus a ray emitted by the light-pro-ducing medium is reflected by the inner mirror outward to the greater jiiirror through the tissue-cone and ■the two-fold Hens.

This greater mirror, oval and con.eftve, is formed by a great number of parallel planes. It plays a double part ; it throws out the rays engendered in the apparatus beneath and jflung up against it ; and by its own direct contact with the. lens it directly takes of the light (not merely ■indirectly as the rays impinge upon it) and glows throughout afll its (thickness ; the superimposed plates 'take fire, as it were, and the erfect, to use Dr. Joubin's appropriately luminous comparison, is a phenomenon similar to that of the luminous J contain. cephalopod does not shine perpetually," said Dr. .loubin ;

"that would imply too great consumption of energy. Hut it is also fairly certain that the lanterns can light up automatically. If '" llio darkness of the greater depths of the sea a living prey natural to the cephalopod chances by. the ccphalopod's organism is impressed by the heat vibrations emitted, however feebly, by any living being. These vibrations an.' gathered in, so to speak, by tie nval exterior mirror and by ii. transmitted into the lightproducing sphere, causing by reflex action the shooting out of the luminous rays. Thus the sea is lit around the cephalopod, who sees and pounces upon his prey. A heat niy from the prey has caused the (.'mission of the light by winch he is to meet his doom ; the hunter of the deep is automatically advised of the approach of his meal by the omission of the light with which he is to catch it. "Another cephalopod," says the aavant zoologist, "of which 1 have only just completed the study,, wears in iU eye, set in the very globe of the eye, six translucent and very Urlilmut poaaUa. each of which, on

examination under the microscope shows itself different from every other, and consequently must bo supposed to serve a, different purpose." The light emitted by these animals is by no means of uniform tint. It is possible that those rays emitted from the generator are identical, but are modi lied by their refraction from the mirror or by merrily traversing its "mother-of-pearl" plates. It is certain that in the ease 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 (chromatophores) are very complicated organs ; they are entirely within the will-control of the proprietors they can colour their lights at choice red's, blues, greens, yellows, lilacs, purples—all colours are seen :it is a question of opening or shutting this or that set of the numbeiUess organs of light at their disposal. On what principle, to what particular 'purpose, do they decide now for opening, now for shutting ? Dr. Joubin owns, I heir fires dulled in spirits, a set of ceplialopods—ugly and uninteresting looking beasts their amazing lighting equipment showing in minute specks. "Priceless !" lie remarks. "How many do you suppose there are in the whole of the upper world ? A dozen at most. Vet for ages the deeps are full of them, radiant, with them. These are the marvellous living lamps of the sea. Hoes not the sea become a fairyland when you think of it ?" Their first and obvious purpose is for the capturing of their prey. Lying in the perpetual darkness of the sea at great depths, they, await a victim. At his near approach he is startled, if not half stunned, by the brilliant animal searchlight's sudden blaze, and is quickly enwrapped by the cephalopod's powerful arms. 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 ninetv years ago by a Frenchman. Ho claimed that he had seen a sea creature that gave out wonderful iridescent ravs and exhibited his capture. But it was then dead and lightlesK and his story was laughed at and universally discredited."— "New York World."