The Chinese truly are a singular people! All the discoveries of European science and industry are recorded in their books, especially in their popular legends. One might think them miners who exploit diamond mines according to their whim but have no idea how to extract the precious stone from its matrix.
In the Chinese encyclopedia entitled Fayuan-Zhulin, book LII, there is the story of a princess named Me-Chi, with whom Racmi, the king of the land of Djambouli, was greatly enamored. Mei-Chi could not consent to give her hand to Racmi, because the prince offered her gifts that were magnificent but vulgar, and she only wanted to marry a monarch who could create unknown marvels for her.
One evening, after sunset, Racmi arrived at Mei-Chi’s house. Mounted on a meek and well-dressed elephant, he was preceded by a thousand lantern-bearers and followed by a cortege of bayaderes, who were dancing and causing the air to resound with their songs.
From her window, the young woman shouted to the king; “Do you think that I’ve never seen a richly-clad elephant or heard bayaderes singing before?”
“Divine beauty,” Racmi replied, “deign to climb on to this elephant; allow yourself to be conducted by the choir of bayaderes to my palace, and, if you do not see there that which you have never seen before, I swear an oath never to mention the word love in your presence again.”
Mei-Chi shrugged her shoulders, and replied that, not believing a word of what he had said, she would go to his palace in order to rid herself of his obsessive love once and for all.
So she climbed up on to the elephant, and allowed herself to be taken to the king’s home. Racmi showed her into a gallery full of plants, especially nasturtiums, the favorite flowers of the Chinese. Scarcely had Mei-Chi come in than the thousands of torches lighting in the gallery were extinguished. All the flowers began to glow, and two red birds sang the following verses:
You do not wish, O Mei-Chi,
Charming but pitiless tiger.
You do not wish all hearts
To light up for your beauty
How can they not burn
Since all inanimate things light up
And burn in your presence
With a celestial and supernatural flame.
Mei-Chi wiped away a tear and allowed her hand to fall into the hand of the happy Racmi. Then, suddenly excited, she cried: “It wasn’t you, Prince, who had the idea of giving me this fête; it was suggested to you by someone else.”
“Yes,” he replied, “first by love, and then by the Buddha.”
Mei-Chi sighed. “I have given you my hand,” she said. “Keep it. Nevertheless, it’s to the Buddha that I should have accorded it.”
She said that to torment the prince, adds the satirical story-teller of Peking, for she knew full well that princes can purchase ideas, but hardly ever have any of their own.
There is no lack of talking birds in Europe, beginning with the blackbirds of the Celestine barracks, which, from the treetops where they perch freely, repeat the fanfares of the municipal guards’ trumpets on a daily basis.
As for flowers that glow, they exist, and I have seen then, no less recently than yesterday.
Outside the official society of science there is in Paris a small group of individuals who modestly and silently devote to persistent studies the scarce leisure time left to them by the labors from which they wearily obtain their daily bread. Some have just entered into life and are beginning to trace the furrow of their future there; others, grown old beneath the harness of industry or administration, are reaching the end of their career. All, without exception, can only covertly, often at the expense of their sleep and always at the cost of sacrifices exorbitant for their slender purses, deliver themselves to a passion that is imperious and despotic, as all passions that one is able freely to satisfy.
And yet, from this unknown and poverty-stricken congregation, great discoveries sometimes emerge, some of which have already seen the light of day and attained their rank, but most of which remain in obscurity. Patents cost so much! And the Académie des Sciences is so good at burying, for good or ill, everything that is submitted to its consideration! It appoints a committee to make a report, it’s true, but the committee never makes its report. I can give you too long a list, alas, of inventions and discoveries accepted and applied universally today, but which have been waiting for ten years for a report from the committee nominated by the Institut.
At the home of one of the pioneers of science I mentioned just now, when the weather outside was freezing, in a little greenhouse heated by means of new and ingenious apparatus in which electricity plays a role, it was given to me to see created, almost at will, the luminous phenomena that certain plants present, which would have amazed Linné and Goethe.
In the month of July 1762, Elizabeth-Christine Linné, the daughter of the famous naturalist, while taking an evening stroll in a garden, noticed—not without a shock of surprise-little flashes of light springing from the flowers of a clump of Tropoelum majus. Now, are you familiar with the flower that botanists call Tropoelum? It’s the nasturtium—that popular climbing plant, so commonplace that its flower has given its name to a color.
Elizabeth immediately ran in search of her father and a few friends, who accompanied her and became witnesses, in their turn, to the phenomenon that had astonished her. Shortly afterwards, she published a note on the subject in the Memoirs of the Stockholm Academy.
It’s not only in the nasturtium, but also in the pot marigold (Calendula officinalis), the tiger lily (Lilium bulbiferum), the African marigold (Tagetes erecta), the Mexican marigold (Tagetes patula), the annual sunflower, a relative of the topinambour, and the oriental poppy, that I and a dozen friends were able to observe such a charming phenomenon.48
The most complete darkness enveloped the greenhouse. We were sitting facing a large flower-bed in which the plants I’ve just named were assembled, which had been obtained by artificial culture.
After ten minutes’ wait, an oriental poppy was the first to begin emitting flashes of sufficient magnitude to allow us, not only to see the flower that produced them but also to distinguish its neighbors quite clearly.
These flashes were repeated several times, and were soon confused with those that the other plants were not long delayed in emitting in their turn, albeit with a lesser density.
These flashes were sometimes bright, sometimes faint. Pale, almost white, and about eight to ten centimeters long, there is nothing better to compare them to than daylight. On raising the temperature of the greenhouse, and passing a slight electric current through it, the fantastic illumination acquired greater celerity, vivacity and force.
I think that until now, no one, except for Linné’s daughter and M. Friès,49 the director of the botanical garden in Uppsala, has been witness, as I have been, to a phenomenon still considered dubious by a large number of naturalists. I do not think, above all, that they have seen it produced, in the month of November, almost at will, in an enclosed space.
Botanists have not admitted these phosphorescent plants at present, and have denied the vegetable kingdom the singular property of spontaneously producing authentic electric sparks—or at least contested the privilege.
Gesner50 admits that he has seen nothing of this sort in his very rare text entitled De raris et admirandis herbis, sive quod nocte luceant, sive alias ob causas lunariae nominantur. (On a few rare and admirable herbs which, either because they shine by night or for other reasons, are called lunar.) The best-known instance is that presented by rotting wood; the phosphorescence manifested by that material was initially attributed to the presence of Byssus phosphorea, but the observations of Retzius and Humboldt and the more recent ones of M. Bartig (Bot. Zeit., 1855, no.2) have proved that it resides in the ligneous substance itself.51
Other fragments of vegetation in the process of decomposition can similarly cover themselves with phosphorus. Meyen has seen mushrooms in various stages of decay become luminous in the dark. M. Tulasne, for his part, has studied and carefully described the phosphorescence of dead oak leaves. M. de Martius, in his Voyage au Brésil, has described the vivid light that the milky sap of Euphorbia phosphorea emits at the moment when one squeezes the sap out of the stem. Finally, an analogous observation has been made in Brazil by Mornay, in a liana.52
Phosphorescence similarly occurs in a few living and fully intact vegetables. The best known example, and the one most frequently studied, is that of Rhizomorpha subterranea, a fungus that develops in the wood of mine-shafts; the extremities of its filaments emit a glow so bright that, according to Meyen, Candolle53 and Humboldt, one can read a book by its light.
Another fungus remarkable in this respect is the Agaricus crepidotus of southern Europe. Other species from the tropical regions possess the same faculty of becoming luminous in the dark; they include Agaricus gardneri, igneus and noctilucens.54
A moss, Schistostega osmundacea,55 which grows in grottoes and caverns, emits by day, in certain circumstances, a beautiful emerald-green light. Bridel56 has shown than this light originates from the reflection and refraction of diurnal light by little confervoid57 filaments found under the moss.
How many marvels equally unknown and equally uninteresting remain to be discovered, with the aid of chance? For human genius consists in drawing certain deductions that drive from facts that hazard presents—facts perhaps observed a thousand times by vulgar minds.
Since I began with a Chinese story, I shall finish this chronicle with an apologue of the same origin. It is entitled “Of those who only see the surfaces of things” and is part of the Book of a Hundred Parables by Pe-yu-King.
“There was a Richi58 who had retired to a mountain to try to acquire intelligence (Bodhi). He had obtained the six supernatural faculties and was endowed with a divine sight that penetrated everywhere. He could clearly see all the precious things that were hidden in the bosom of the earth.
“When the king had been informed of this, he was ravished with delight and said to his minister: ‘How can we make sure that this man remains constantly in my kingdom, going nowhere else, and that my treasure is enriched by a multitude of precious things?’
“One of the ministers, whose mind was very limited, immediately went to the Richi and plucked out his eyes. He brought them to the king and said: ‘As I have plucked out his eyes, he will not be able to go anywhere, and will remain constantly in this kingdom.’
“The king said to him: ‘If I desired keenly that the Richi should remain in my kingdom, it was because he could see all the treasures hidden in the depths of the earth. Now that you have plucked out his eyes, what further need have I to make him stay?”
Alas, many scientists in Europe—I mean official scientists—willingly treat their young rivals in the same fashion that the courtier treated the Richi.