"This last voyage we witnessed a weird and most extraordinary electric display." In the Gulf of Oman, he saw a bank of apparently quiescent phosphorescence: but, when within twenty yards of it, "shafts of brilliant light came sweeping across the ship's bows at a prodigious speed, which might be put down as anything between 60 and 200 miles an hour." "These light bars were about 20 feet apart and most regular." As to phosphorescence--"I collected a bucketful of water, and examined it under the microscope, but could not detect anything abnormal." That the shafts of light came up from something beneath the surface--"They first struck us on our broadside, and I noticed that an intervening ship had no effect on the light beams: they started away from the lee side of the ship, just as if they had traveled right through it." The Gulf of Oman is at the entrance to the Persian Gulf. _Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 33-294: Extract from a letter by Mr. S.C. Patterson, second officer of the P. and O. steamship _Delta_: a spectacle which the _Journal_ continues to call phosphorescent: Malacca Strait, 2 A.M., March 14, 1907: "... shafts which seemed to move round a center--like the spokes of a wheel--and appeared to be about 300 yards long. The phenomenon lasted about half an hour, during which time the ship had traveled six or seven miles. It stopped suddenly." _L'Astronomie_, 1891-312: A correspondent writes that, in October, 1891, in the China Sea, he had seen shafts or lances of light that had had the appearance of rays of a searchlight, and that had moved like such rays. _Nature_, 20-291: Report to the Admiralty by Capt. Evans, the Hydrographer of the British Navy: That Commander J.E. Pringle, of H.M.S. _Vulture_, had reported that, at Lat. 26 deg. 26' N., and Long. 53 deg. 11' E.--in the Persian Gulf--May 15, 1879, he had noticed luminous waves or pulsations in the water, moving at great speed. This time we have a definite datum upon origin somewhere below the surface. It is said that these waves of light passed under the _Vulture_. "On looking toward the east, the appearance was that of a revolving wheel with a center on that bearing, and whose spokes were illuminated, and, looking toward the west, a similar wheel appeared to be revolving, but in the opposite direction." Or finally as to submergence--"These waves of light extended from the surface well under the water." It is Commander Pringle's opinion that the shafts constituted one wheel, and that doubling was an illusion. He judges the shafts to have been about 25 feet broad, and the spaces about 100. Velocity about 84 miles an hour. Duration about 35 minutes. Time 9:40 P.M. Before and after this display the ship had passed through patches of floating substance described as "oily-looking fish spawn."