Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 002.djvu/195

 once designed to make Observations about the Light of rotten Fishes, ''and having in order thereunto caused a competent number of them to be bought, not one of them all would shine, though they were bought by the same person I was wont to employ, and hung up in the same place where I use to have them put, and kept not only 'till they began to putrifie, but beyond the time that others used to continue to shine; although a parcel of the same kind of Fishes, bought the week before, and another the same kind, bought not many days after, shined according to expectation. What the reason of this disappointment was, I could not determine; only I remember, that at the time, it happen'd, the weather was variable, and not without some days of Frost and Snow. Nor is this the oddest Observation I could relate to you about the uncertain shining of Fishes, if I thought it necessary to add it in this place.''

tice must also be taken in making Experiments with shining Fish, ''that their luminousness is not wont to continue very many days. Which Advertisement may be therefore useful, because without it we not be apt sometimes to make Trials, that cannot be soon enough brought to an issue; and so we may mistake the loss of Light in the Fish to be a deprivation it caused by the Experiment, which indeed is but a cessation according to the usual course of Nature.''

now nor whether you will think it worth while to be told of a Trial that we made, to save those Criticks a labour, that else might perhaps demand, why 'twas not made. We put therefore a piece of Shining Fish into a wide-mouth'd Glass, about half filled with fair Water, and having placed this Glass in a Receiver, we exhausted the Air for a good while, to observe, Whether, when the pressure of the Air was removed, and yet (by reason of the Wager that did before keep the Air from immediately touching the Fish) the Exhaustion of the Receiver did nor deprive the Fish of that contact of Air, which it had lost before: Whether, I say, in this case the absence of the Air would have the same influence on the shining Body, as in the former Experiments: And here,