412- LUMINOUS INSECTS. 



common female glow-worm, having- usually contented 

 themselves with stating that the light issues from the 

 three last ventral segments of the abdomen^ ; I shall give 

 you the result of some observations I once made upon 

 this subject. One evening, in the beginning of July, 

 meeting with two of these insects, I placed them on my 

 hand. Ac ^irst their light was exceedingly brilliant, so 

 as to appear even at the junctions of the upper or dor- 

 sal segments of the abdomen. Soon after I had taken 

 them, one withdrew its light altogether, but the other 

 continued to shine. While it did this it was laid upon 

 its back, the abdomen forming an angle with the rest 

 of its body, and the last or anal segment being kept in 

 constant motion. This segment was distinguished by 

 two round and very vivid spots of light ; which, in the 

 specimen that had ceased to shine, were the last that 

 disappeared, and they seem to be the first parts that be- 

 come luminous when the animal is disposed to yield its 

 light. The penultimate and antepenultimate segments 

 each exhibited a middle transverse band of yellow ra- 

 diance, terminated towards the trunk by an obtusely- 

 dentated line ; a greener and fainter light being emitted 

 by the rest of the segment. 



Though many of the females of the different species 

 of Lampt/ris are without wings and even elytra, (in 

 which circumstance they differ from all other apterous 

 Coleopfera,) this is not the case with all. The female 

 of L. italica, a species common in Italy, and which, 

 if we may trust to the accuracy of the account given by 

 Mr. Waller in the Philosophical Transactions for 1684, 

 would seem to have been taken by him in Hertford- 



3 Geoffr. i, 167. De Geer, iv. 35. 



