Animal Luminescence 541 



guished by the same splendor as the lampyrides, as Stephanus Spleisius, 

 the authority on stars, suggested to me in Basel. Vintimillia discovered 

 from this a miracle of nature, which denied the females wings, but 

 endowed them with a more vigorous light in order that they could call 

 the males at night with their shine. The males shone only with a small 

 light, and the size of their body was much smaller. 



No statement could be plainer than the above. In the case of the 

 European firefly the male is winged, the female wingless. Moreover, 

 Vintimillia appears to have been the first to realize that the eggs 

 of the firefly are luminous and that the purpose of the light is sex 

 attraction. 



When Jonston's Historia Naturalis. De Insectis libri III appeared 

 from Frankfort a M. in 1653, the same stories of perpetual light 

 were included in the section, " De Cicindela." However, little can 

 be said for Jonston's originality, as much of the description is directly 

 copied from Aldrovandi and Muffet. Although a physician and pro- 

 fessor of medicine at Frankfurt, Jonston traveled extensively in 

 Poland, Germany, Holland, England, and Scotland, and should have 

 known better than to repeat the fable of a " liquor lucidus " at so 

 late a date. 



Sir Thomas Browne in Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) and Atha- 

 nasius Kircher both labeled the story a myth (see Chapter IV) . 

 Kircher devoted considerable space to a discussion of glowworms, 

 both in his Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (1646, 1671) and again in 

 Mundus Subterraneus (1664) . He actually collected and observed 

 fireflies (at Malta) , refuting Pliny's statement that the light only 

 shows when the wings were spread, but he was more interested in 

 the insect as a spectacle and a marvel than in the chemical nature of 

 the light. He was content to " say that the noctilucent Nitedula has 

 this intrinsic and innate light ... by the providence of nature for 

 definite ends." 



The use of fireflies and glowworms in medicine was highly recom- 

 mended during the seventeenth century. Most of the remedies men- 

 tioned by Muffet (chapter III) were repeated by such writers as 

 Stephano Rodriguez de Castro (1559-1637) , professor of medicine 

 at the University of Pisa, in De Meteoris Microcosmi, Venice, 1621 

 (book 4, chap. 16) ; also by Johann Rudolph Camerarius in Sylloges 

 Memorabilium Medecinae, 1624, Tubingae, 1683 (cent. 4, part 30 

 and cent. 19, part 37) and Johannes Schroeder (1600-1664), who 

 wrote a book on animals in relation to medicine, which was trans- 

 lated by T. Bateson as Zoologica, or the History of Animals as they 

 are Useful in Physick and Chirugery (London, 1659) . Johannes 



