198 BULLETIN 139, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



His work lasts till about 2 o'clock in the morning, when the insects 

 leave the trees for the dewy soil. He then changes his method. He 

 brushes the surface of the ground with a hght broom to startle the 

 insects into light; then he gathers them as before. An expert has 

 been known to gather 3,000 in one night. 



Besides being a business, firefly catching is a sport in Japan. 

 Little girls pursue the insects with their fans, boys with wands to 

 which a wisp of yarn is fastened, and they sing and old folk rhyme 

 as they follow the glistening insects. Nor do their elders disdain to 

 join the sport. They organize festival parties to visit certain spots 

 long known and famous to witness the beautiful spectacle of the 

 fireflys swarming. ^^ 



Necessarily in the employment of fireflies as light for various pur- 

 poses there would arise the need of apparatus for confining the insects. 

 In the West Indies this has taken the form of a lantern with a grating 

 of small rods, like the cages in which the Chinese keep fighting crickets 

 (pi. 32, fig. 1) . Another form closer to nature is the calabash perforated 

 with many small holes and furnished with a door. Humboldt des- 

 cribes the latter form used under remarkable circumstances during 

 a voyage from Cumana.^^ 



Miss E. R. Scidmore brought to the United States National Muse- 

 um from Java a curious firefly lamp consisting of a small oval wooded 

 box with pivoted lid. The interior is lined with pitch, upon which 

 fireflies are stuck. Reserve fireflies are kept in a cane tube. The 

 apparatus is described as a burglar's dark lantern (pi. 32, fig. 2.) 



The exact scientific experiments with the light of the firefly carried 

 on by S. P. Langley and F. W. Very in 1890, and many others at 

 earlier and later periods, have given scientific data on the photometric 

 and thermal properties of the light and the vital processes concerned 

 in its production. It was thought that these experiments might be 

 an introduction to the utilization of this heatless light and that a 

 revolution in illumination might follow. There was, however, only 

 uncovered a problem of undreamed-of complexity, whose solution 

 awaits an indeterminate future. ■*" 



TORCH AND CANDLE 



There was a stage in history of illumination in which the torch 

 was almost the sole artificial light. The torch stage also comes close 

 up to and overlaps the inventive period, but is fast passing away 

 before modern appliances. A review shows that almost all tribes 



'* Article in the Washington Herald, Aug. 24, 1910, from Harper's Weekly. See also Scientific Amer- 

 ican Supplement, No. 1138, Oct. 23, 1897. 



•» Travels and Researches of A. von Humboldt, Edinburgh, 1832, p. 262. 



*" F. Alex. McDermott. Recent Advances In and Knowledge of Light by^Living Organisms, Smith. 

 Rept., 1911, pp. 345-362. This paper gives an extended bibliography of the subject. 



