284 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



perhaps the larva of the firefly, there are others which seem 

 more opposed to it. 



I shall now give an account and description of the larva in 

 question. It has been seen by at least three gentlemen, 

 whose accounts all correspond. 



It was first seen by Mr. Fry himself, on returning to Rio 

 one evening when night had fallen. He was accompanied 

 by a friend, and both were on horseback. His eye was 

 caught by a brilliant luminous beam, obviously an insect 

 creeping across the road before ihem. He dismounted and 

 picked it up. On taking it into his hand he found that its 

 head gave out a bright red- coloured light like the red danger- 

 lamp of a railway carriage. It was persistent and especially 

 visible on the top and back of the head ; and down the side 

 of the body there was a succession of exceedingly bright 

 white lights, which were not visible all at once, or at all 

 events were not always visible all at once. These lights 

 streamed from the spiracles, and, as the insect moved, ran in 

 succession, one after the other, from the head to the tail, 

 down the sides, like the movement of the ribs of a serpent or 

 the segments of a worm, or what it really is, the segments of 

 a caterpillar; there was another larger light in the tail, which 

 was also white and not persistent. Mr. Fry took it home 

 with him to try and rear it ; but it died in a day or two. His 

 memorandum made at the time is in these words : — 



" No. 368. — Rio. — Red light in the head, white light in 

 the tail, and one light on each side at each segment of the 

 body. Light in the head permanent, the others showing by 

 flashes." 



Mr. Fry remembers once again seeing a specimen at St. 

 Theresa, close to Rio, but he does not recollect what became 

 of it. 



Mr. Frank Miers saw either the present specimen when it 

 was alive, or some other; and his account of it wholly corre- 

 sponds with Mr. Fry's. His expression for the colour of the 

 head is that it was " garnet-coloured.' 



Mr. John Miers, juu., met with another specimen inde- 

 pendently of Mr. Fry, and, he thinks, sent it home to his 

 father, .\ir. John Aliers, the celebrated botanist, who, how- 

 ever, does not remember anything of it ; nor, so far as a cur- 

 sory exauiinalion of his entomological collection goes, does 



