Living lights : $b A popular account of phosphorescent animals and vegetablesHolder, Charles Frederick
Science
Living lights : $b A popular account of phosphorescent animals and vegetables
Holder, Charles Frederick
Animals; Bioluminescence; Phosphorescence
In _Ptycogaster formosus_ (Plate XIII., Fig. 1), we find an interesting
form, living at a depth of twenty-eight hundred and fifty feet, or
more than half a mile, from the surface, which is provided with
well-developed eyes.
[41] PAGE 81. The individual zooids, amounting to many hundreds, are
grouped in whorls, their orifices so arranged that the inhalent are
upon the outside of the cylinder, and the exhalent upon the interior.
Each animal draws in a current from the outside, ejecting it into the
interior; the result of this volume of water rushing from the open
end being that the entire colony is forced along, at the same time
revolving upon its long axis.
[42] PAGE 81. Panceri says, “Each zooid has two luminous spots, which
are situated over the position of the ganglia of the nervous system;
and there are loops like cords passing over the narrow end, connecting
them.”
[43] PAGE 94. Dr. Gunther expressed the view that the organs are the
producers, not the receivers, of light. He says, in brief, that the
number of pairs of small globular bodies found along the abdominal
profile is in direct relation to that of the vertebræ, the muscular
system, etc. These are of two kinds. One class consists of the
anterior, bi-convex, lens-like body, which is transparent during life;
simple, or composed of rods, and coated with a dark membrane composed
of hexagonal cells or rods arranged as in a retina. This structure
characterizes the plates of _Stomias_ (Plate XX.), _Astronechtes_,
_Chauliodus_ (Plate XXI., Fig. 4).
In the other set, as found in _Gonostoma_, _Myctoplum mausolicus_, and
_Argyopelicus_, the organs have a simple, glandular structure. Branches
of spinal nerves have been traced to each organ, and are distributed
over the retina-like membrane of the glandular follicles.
The difference in structure of those organs naturally produces
difference of opinion regarding their functions; but Gunther believes
that all the organs in their functions have some relations to the
conditions of light in which the fishes that possess them live. Three
principal theories regarding them are given: first, they may all be
accessory eyes; second, only the organs with the lenticular body are
eyes, and those with glands are light-givers; third, all are producers
of light. Many arguments have been advanced to support these different
hypotheses; but it would seem that the second view is most tenable,
from the fact that the organs with the retina-like membrane bear a
great resemblance to a true eye, and finally the glandular organ
in the little fish _Myctoplum_ has been seen to gleam with a
phosphorescent light. Dr. Gunther thinks it not improbable that the
compound organ is an accessory eye, and a light-producer as well. The
light, he says, may be produced at the bottom of the posterior chamber,
and emitted through the lenticular body in particular directions, with
the same effect as when light is sent through the convex glass of a
bull’s-eye.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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