ELATERID^ — FIRE-FLIES, SPRING-BEETLES, ETC. 53 



At Cumana, the use of the Cucujus is forbidden, as the 

 young Spanish ladies used to cany on a correspondence at 

 night with their lovers by means of the light derived from 

 them.^ 



Captain Stedman tells us, that one of his sentinels, one 

 night, called out that he saw a negro, with a lighted tobac- 

 co-pipe, cross a creek near by in a canoe. At which alarm 

 they lost no time in leaping out of their hammocks, and 

 were not a little mortified when they found the pipe was 

 nothing more than a Fire-fly on the wing.^ 



An individual of this species, brought to Paris in some 

 wood, in the larva or nymph state, there underwent its 

 metamorphosis, and by the light which it emitted, excited 

 the greatest surprise among many of the inhabitants of the 

 Faubourg St. Antoine, to whom such a phenomenon had 

 hitherto been unknown.^ 



When Cortes and Narvaez were at war with one another 

 in Mexico, Bernal Diaz relates "that one night in the midst 

 of darkness numbers of shining Beetles (E later 7ioctilucus) 

 kept continually flying about, which Narvaez's men mistook 

 for the lighted matches of our fire-arms, and this gave them 

 a vast idea of the number of our matchlocks."* Thomas 

 Campanius tells us that one night the Cucuji frightened all 

 the soldiers at Fort Christina, in New Sweden (Pennsyl- 

 vania ?) : they thought they were enemies advancing to- 

 ward them with lighted torches.^ Another such like story, 

 which is not incredible by any means, is told us by Moufifet. 

 He says that when Sir Thomas Cavendish and Sir Robert 

 Dudley first landed in the West Indies, and saw an infinite 

 number of moving lights in the woods, which were merely 

 these Elaters, they supposed that the Spaniards were ad- 

 vancing upon them with lighted matches, and immediately 

 betook themselves to their ships.^ 



The Indians of the Carribbee Islands, Ogleby remarks, 

 " anoint their bodies all over (at certain solemnities wherein 

 candles are forbidden) with the juice squeezed out of them 



1 Baird's Cyclop, of Nat. Sci. 



2 Stedm. Surinam, i. 140. 



3 Cuvier, An. King. — Ins., i. 321, 

 * Conq. of Mex., i. 327. 



5 Hist, of New Swed., p. 162. 

 *> Theatr. Insect., p. 112. 



