Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1906. A LIVING LAMP.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XXX, Issue 8378, 20 February 1906, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Third of a Century.] TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1906. A LIVING LAMP.

The Saturday Kvrnimj Pi ml of Philadelphia, the foremost of the educative publications of the United States, which under the splendid editorship of Mr George Horace Lorimer is becoming one of the most illuminating papers of the world, gives interesting publicity to the remarkable discoveries made by Professor Molisch, of the University of Prague. This devotee of science has for many years devoted himself to the question of forming a " living lamp," and he appears to have succeeded in a most remarkable manner. The story of his researches, the plain unadorned story, in its very simplicity is a romance intensely interesting. The Professor holds that there is in Nature a substance capable of emitting light. It is this substance which ignites the fire-fly's torch and the glow-worm's light, and the innumerable lanterns carried by creatures on land and sea. The Professor made long and patient experiments. He found that fish, meat, decaying wood, etc., exhibited luminescence, and he set himself the task of finding how the phenomenon originated. The result of this research was that Professor Molisch satisfied himself that it was not the meat, the fish, or the wood which gave forth the light, but microbes that lived upon them. The next step was the collection and culture of bacteria, and the Professor constructed an apparatus for the perpetuation of these light-givers in gelatine. He further discovered how the microbes might be nourished, and in the course of time he formed a repository or nursery of them. His* next step was to placo a quantity of the microbe and gelatine paste in a.glass tube, so as to form an internal coating for the glass. Within forty-eight hours of the preparation of this "wonderful lamp," the bacteria multiplied exceedingly and spread all over the glass, emitting a soft light of indescribable beauty—a greenish radiance absolutely steady. Nothing more mystic could be conceived than this. Already the possibilities of this marvellous development have attracted the notice of scientific men everywhere, and not the least interesting feature of the discovery is that it bids fair to make light cheap. It is claimed, too, that the element of safety is assured by this process. Jules Verne, in his wildest flights of imagination, never gave us anything so marvellous as this substance, which its discoverer calls " Photogen."