] 74 LUMINOUS CENTIPEDE. 



that if the " Swan of Avon " had applied this epithet to the 

 moth instead of glowworm, his fancy would have better cor- 

 responded with fact ; for a fact it is, though probably quite 

 unknown in the days of Shakspeare, that many species of 

 night-flying moths are endowed with luminosity in the organs 

 of sight, the light being most visible while the insect is in 

 motion. 



"Pour Pamour de ses beaux yeux," we may perhaps, 

 therefore, include the moth among luminous insects; but 

 there is another, a native of England, perhaps as common 

 as the glowworm, which, although from its habits compa- 

 ratively little noticed, shares her luminous endowments to a 

 very considerable extent. This is the electric centipede,*" a 

 black, many-legged crawler, which almost everybody must have 

 seen and shrunk from, as it has crossed their path in the day- 

 time. As this creature (which has been likened to a miniature 

 model of a serpent's skeleton) moves, serpent-like, forward or 

 backward, he leaves behind him, or before him, a tangible 

 track of the phosphoric light, which, in darkness, strongly 

 illuminates his unsightly form; but, as if conscious of his 

 loathly aspect, it is mostly in daylight, when it is least con- 

 spicuous, that he issues from his lair, some abode of darkness, 

 either in the earth, or beneath a stone. 



The Mole Cricket is another insect which has been sup- 

 posed to emit light ; to have been, indeed, in some cases, the 



* Scolopendra dectrica. See Vignette. 



