Pliny spoke of luminescence in the mouths of people who ate
Pholas, the rock-boring shell-fish, and of such importance is this phenomenon that it is even said to have gained the first king of Scotland his throne. Hippolytus of Rome tells us that it was a common pagan trick to use the luminescent property of this clam to create the illusion of burning, "And they accomplish the burning of a house, by daubing it over with the juice of a certain fish called dactylus." In Bernard Cornwell’s ‘Excalibur’ Merlin daubs a girl in the juices from ‘Piddocks’ (a local British name) to give the impression of pagan divinity in a young girl. File:Pholas dactylus 01.jpg|Right valve File:Pholas dactylus 02.jpg|Left valve ==References==