How do the firefly and the glowworm blink their lights? How does the jellyfish called ctenophore and the tiny, multitudinous noctiluca flash in the sea? And two score other fish, insects, plants, and bacteria?
To tell an inquisitive public, New York's American Institute last week conducted another of its popular lectures on scientific topics. Speaker was Edmund Newton Harvey, professor of physiology at Princeton and authority on chemiluminescence for the National Research Council.* After explaining that luminescence in living matter is not phosphorescence and has nothing to do with phosphorus, he had a simple...
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