Observations on Ignes Fatuu 355 



passed Blandford early in the morning, considerably before 

 sunrise, when objects were just distinguishable, I saw what 

 was new to me, and which fixed all my attention, for the 

 short time allowed to observe it while mounted on the out- 

 side of the coach, passing at the usual rate of 7 or 8 miles an 

 hour. On my right hand, and the side on which I was 

 placed, at the distance of 40 or 50 paces, appeared an irregu- 

 lar light, bounding or rising to the height of 3 or 4 ft. over 

 some heathy shrubs, which covered the high and marshy 

 ground spreading to a great extent : amongst these it sank 

 and reappeared with a motion somewhat between flying and 

 leaping. A friend, who was with me, observed it, and ex- 

 claimed that it was the third appearance of the like phenome- 

 non ; and, requesting him to give me more information, he 

 answered, that, when travelling the Bath road on a similar 

 conveyance, at the same time in the morning and season of 

 the year, he observed one, though not so distant from the 

 road as the one we had passed : its flight was in the same di- 

 rection with the coach; and several times it alighted on the 

 shrubs or high grass on the border of a wet ditch near the 

 road side. The experienced coachman pronounced it to be a 

 Will-with-the-wisp. 



" Yours, dear Sir, very truly, 



"T. Stothard." 



Mr. Stothard was of opinion that the supposed Ignis Fatuus, 

 from its motion being between flying and leaping, is the mole- 

 cricket. He brought one from his cabinet, and pointed to 

 the structure of its wings, in proof of this conclusion ; for it 

 could not fly high, nor long together; and the habitat of the 

 Gryllotalpa being the same as where this luminous appearance 

 is usually seen, is another coincidence. In the second volume 

 of Mr. Kirby's Introduction to Entomology, he relates a cir- 

 cumstance corroborative of the above hypothesis : — "The 

 Rev. Dr. Sutton of Norwich, when he was curate of Tikleton, 

 Cambridgeshire, in 1780, a farmer of that place of the name 

 of Simpringham brought to him a mole-cricket, and told him 

 that one of his people, seeing a Jack-o'-lantern, pursued and 

 knocked it down, when it proved to be this insect, and the 

 identical specimen shown to him." 



In the admirable work just noticed, its learned author, who 

 strongly advocates the opinion of these supposed meteoric ap- 

 pearances being luminous insects, gives the following interesting 

 fact : — " Mr. Sheppard, travelling one night, between Stam- 

 ford and Grantham, on the top of the stage, observed for 

 more than ten minutes a very large Ignis Fatuus in the low 



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