The Nature of Animal Light

One of the most extraordinary things regarding luminescence in general is the small amount of material necessary to cause a visible emission of light. To take an extreme case, t...

Since Radziszewski's experiments on the oxidation of oils in alcoholic solutions of alkali, most of the early workers on Bioluminescence tacitly assumed that the oxidizable mate...

Two experiments, both performed very early in the history of Bioluminescence, are of great importance in understanding the nature of animal light. Boyle (1667), as already menti...

The efficiency of any light may be defined in several different ways: (1) By the percentage of visible wave-lengths in the total amount of radiation emitted, _i.e._, visible rad...

The fact that animals can produce light must have been recognized from the earliest times in countries where fireflies and glowworms abound, but it is only since the perfection...

We know of no animal whose eyes, the organs, _par excellence_, of photochemical change, give off light in the dark. All cases of luminous eyes have been conclusively shown to be...

A body which emits light because of its (high) temperature is said to be incandescent and we speak of temperature radiation. We know, however, of many cases where substances giv...

Interest in the light of animals from a physical standpoint has centred around questions of quality, efficiency and intensity, but in only one group of luminous animals, the bee...

(xanthin or uric acid). One might surmise that the light of the animal was a crystalloluminescence accompanying the formation of these crystals. It is easy to show, however, tha...

Modern physical theory supposes that light is a succession of wave pulses in the ether caused by vibrating electrons. The light to which we are most accustomed--sunlight, electr...

The production of light is the converse of the detection of light. In the first case chemical energy is converted into radiant energy; in the second case radiant energy is conve...