Page - 223 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

223The Expeditio litteraria ad Polum Arcticum cut the island into two halves]. This means that the sea level, during the fifteen years, has decreased as much as the current distance between the two bays. […] The same soldier said that the winter cold intensifies more and more each year, an observation in perfect accordance with the decrease of the sea and rise of the land. […] Perhaps the same decrease of the sea level is the cause of a general decrease in the amount of fish over the last decade, both in terms of the number of fish and their size. For when there is less water, there is obviously less fish as well.43 Based on this quick note, scribbled down at the spot, Hell took action. Before leaving Vardø for good in late June 1769, he made sure to erect two pillars at the highest level currently reached by the sea during high tide. The local clergy and military personnel were requested to keep an eye on the experiment by taking notes of how far the sea level receded from those pillars over the coming years.44 During stops on the southbound journey, he found further evidence in support of his conviction of a receding sea level. Such was the apparent speed of the development that Hell believed he could provide the world of learning with a discussion of “unavoidable politico-economical consequences resulting from the decrease of the sea level in the northern reigns.”45 Again, an enlight- ened perspective is adopted by Hell, in which natural knowledge has crucial implications for developments in the public domain, and the temporary ser- vant of the Nordic kingdom does not hesitate to bring such implications to the attention of his masters and the wider world. In the third part of the Tomus physicus, Hell promised to unveil one of the natural wonders of the north, namely the nightly luminescence of the sea, or “milky seas,” known in the local Norwegian language as morild. The question of the cause of morild was a matter of dispute. In Pontoppidan’s Norges Naturlige Historie, Hell seems to have read what the bishop had to say on the matter: according to an Italian study published in Venice, small “larvae” had been found to emit light when the water of the Mediterranean was stirred. These were, however, only visible when the sea water was sieved through a piece of cloth and the minuscule creatures thus trapped subsequently studied in a microscope.46 A contradictory opinion was found in the first volume of the 43 Hell, manuscript beginning with the words “NB de horologijs” (wus). 44 Kragemo, “Pater Hells Vardøhusekspedisjon,” 118. 45 Hell, call for subscriptions, translation in Aspaas, “Maximilianus Hell,” 373. An early stage discussion of this topic is found in Hell’s letter to Niebuhr in Copenhagen, dated Vardø, April 6, 1769 (draft, wus), incomplete transcript in Pinzger, Hell Miksa, 2:88–91 (on 90–91). 46 Pontoppidan, Norges Naturlige Historie, 1:117–20.