THE MOON'S RAYS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 46, 16 June 1914, Page 4

THE MOON'S RAYS.

The moon has always been regarded with some awe and it is quite common knowledge that the moon's bright rays are said to make men go blind and mad, and to turn foodstuff bad. The Lancet refers to a death officially stated to have been due to exposure to moonlight. Apparently the food most seriously affected by the moon's radiations is fish, and seemingly trustworthy statements have been made as to the ill-effects produced in persons who had partaken of fish which had been freely exposed to moonlight. Mr E. G. Bryant, writing to a contemporary from Port Elizabeth, South Africa, suggests that a possible explanation might lie in the well-known fact that the light of the moon, being reflected light, is more or less polarised,. and possibly polarised light may exert a peculiar chemical action. Polarised light, was obtained by him from' a powerful metallic lamp, the light being polarised by means of a pile of sheets of plate glass backed with silver and placed at the correct angle. The experiments showed certain marked results when fish was submitted to this light. When two slices cut from the same fish were hung, one in the direct light and the other in the polarised beam of light, the latter invariably began to decompose before the former, though the temperature of the polarised beam was several degrees lower than the direct light.