Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 93, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1898 — THE LIGHT OF THE FUTURE. [ARTICLE]

THE LIGHT OF THE FUTURE.

Stwdyinir That Produced by Animal and Vegetable Life. The incandescent electric light wastes and throws away 98 per cent, of the energy utilized, only two per cent, appearing in the shape of light rays. On the other hand, the light emitted by the firefly and the glow worm wastes but two per cent.. In other words, the animal light is 48 times cheaper. In the course of recent experiments Dr. Raphael Dubois, of Lyons, has made elaborate studies of a great many kinds of light-producing creatures. There is no lack of them in nature; in fact, thousands of species possess this curious photogenic power. Not a few plants also have it, and among the latter may be mentioned certain mushrooms that grow in Brazil and Austria. Some of them enough light to make it possifble to read by the aid of a single specimen. The luminosity frequently seen in autumn in the forests on dead leaves or on bits of wood is due to fungi. The yellow flowers of the nasturtium emit a small amount of light. But in the animal kingdom the torchbearers assume an immense variety of forms, the minute organisms that are responsible for much of the ocean’s phosphorescence to the deep-sea fishes that carry’ lamps of their own and form endless torchlight processions through the otherwise black and gloomy marine abysses. Many jelly fishes are luminous, and so are some of the star fishes. A few earthworms are light-givers and numerous crustaceans have a luminosity of their own. One kind of shrimp has a brilliant circle surrounding the eye, which is really a luminous socket. A European species of “thousand legs” emits light in autumn. But no animals are better light-givers than certain insects, and even the eggs of some of these are luminous. From generation to generation the light-bearing creatures transmit the torch that is never extinguished, and which seems to have been lighted at the very dawn of creation. —Boston Transcript.