LtJMINOUS INSECTS. 421 



the wind may convey the light body of an insect to the 

 above-mentioned distance from land, you will not dis- 

 pute when you call to mind that our friend Hooker, in 

 . his interesting- Tour in Iceland, tells us that the ashes 

 from the eruption of one of the Icelandic volcanos in 

 1753 were conveyed to Ferrol, a distance of upwards 

 of 300 miles'*. — Lastly, to conclude my list of luminous 

 insects, Professor Afzelius observed " a dim phospho- 

 ric light" to be emitted from the singular hollow an- 

 tennaB o£ Pousus sphcerocerus^ ; and a similar appear- 

 ance has been noticed in the eyes of Noctua Psi, Bom- 

 hyx Cossus, and other moths. Chiroscelis hifenestrata 

 of Lamarck, a beetle, has two red oval spots covered 

 with a downy membrane on the second segment of the 

 abdomen, which he thinks indicate some particular or- 

 gan perhaps luminous''. 



But besides the insects here enumerated, others may 

 be luminous which have not hitherto been suspected of 

 being so. This seems proved by the following fact. 

 A learned friend*^ has informed me, that when he was 

 curate of Ickleton, Cambridgeshire, in 1780, a farmer 

 of that place of the name of Simpringhara brought to 

 him a mole-cricket {Gryllotalpa vulgaris^ Latr.), and 

 told him that one of his people, seeing a. Jack-oUanterrij 



Cantharis fusca, fell in such abundance that they might have been taken 

 from the snow by handfuls. — Other showers of insects which have been 

 recorded, as that in Hungary, 20th November 1612 {Ephem. Nat. Curios. 

 1673. 80), and one mentioned in the newspapers of July 2d, 1810, to have 

 fallen in France the January preceding, accompanied by a shower of 

 red snow, may evidently be explained in the same manner. 



» p. 40T. •■ Linn. Trans, iv. 261. "= Latr. Hist. Nat. x. 262. 



" Rev. Dr. Sutton of Norwich. 



