THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 23 



parent projection of the head." In a foot-note we find that 

 Richard and Sieber, the most experienced of all Brazilian 

 Entomologists, deny the existence of any luminons property 

 in Fulgora laternaria. Twenty years afterwards I collected 

 all the evidence within my reach on both sides of the ques- 

 tion, and published it in the 8rd volume of the 'Entomologi- 

 cal Magazine.' It is rather too voluminous to quote, but the 

 amount of evidence in support of the luminosity of Fulgora 

 proved to be very, very small indeed. Still there were many 

 who delighted in retaining a traditional belief in the lanthorn 

 fly of South America, a belief, however, doomed to be rudely 

 shaken by a thirty years' resident in their very midst. After 

 discussing the possible uses of the lanthorn, a question rather 

 beside my present purpose, this writer proceeds : — " 1 cannot 

 tell why it is called the ' lanthorn fly,' for it gives no light. 

 I speak from my own experience during a residence of more 

 than thirty years in New Granada, and from the information 

 of the men who catch them." — Robert J. Treffry, in Zool. for 

 1863, p. 8656. This really appears to me conclusive, and the 

 question I should have supposed set at rest ; but Mr, Smith, 

 the late talented President of the Entomological Society, in 

 his Annual Address, revives the question, and boldly takes 

 up the cause of the deposed lanthorn fly as follows : — 



" In all branches of Natural History there are certain spe- 

 cies indelibly connected with some cherished history of 

 childhood, — some that no doubt have been so united for 

 centuries past : these we care not to separate, even though 

 stubborn facts would ruthlessly dispel our long-dreamt 

 dream ; thus the I'obin covered the Children of the Wood 

 * painfully with leaves ;' the wolf glared on Little Red Riding 

 Hood ; and amongst insects, does not the glowworm trim 

 her lover's lamp, and does not the lanthorn fly, like a wan- 

 dering star, flit before us in the forests of South America ? 

 Any matter-of-fact person who ventures to explode any of 

 our popular beliefs meets with a cold reception ; therefore, 

 on looking over the July number of the 'Zoologist' (Zool. 

 8656), and meeting with an article headed ' The Lanthorn of 

 Fulgora laternaria,' in which Mr. Robert John Trefl^ry, of 

 New Granada, says, * I cannot tell why it is called the 

 lanthorn fly, for it gives no light,' in being able to answer 

 his question by replying, ' Because other people have been 



