338 MORE POT-POURRI 



else were they so beautiful, and nowhere else did the 

 air blow so fresh, and yet so warm, as in my home of 

 the winds, the 'Pension d'Arcetri.' 



The only sadness that I know of in these southern 

 summers is that the twilights are so short. I missed 

 much the long, pale primrose evening skies of June, 

 which at home throw up their faint northern brightness 

 right into the indigo of the star skies of night, and 

 almost meet Aurora at her waking. 



But the dark evenings are wanted to show the beauty 

 of those wonderful fairy -like things that flit about in 

 millions under the Olive trees and in the corn. I had 

 never seen the fireflies since the summer I passed under 

 Fiesole, when I was a little child of ten, but I had not 

 forgotten them. The poetry that hangs around them is 

 endless ; their natural history is prosaic. They are 

 beetles. Both sexes are luminous, though that is not 

 the general belief in Italy. They are nearly related to 

 our glowworm. The colour of the fireflies is warmer 

 and more golden than the blue light of the glowworm, 

 and their beauty is enhanced and made more mysterious 

 because the light comes and goes, and shows much more 

 brightly at intervals. These fireflies are usually only to 

 be met with in quite the south of Europe, but in fine 

 hot summers they can be seen in rarer numbers as far 

 north as Switzerland, and even the middle of Germany. 

 The Italians call them lucciole, and associate them with 

 all sorts of pretty poetical stories. Ouida says : 'One 

 cannot wonder that the poets love them, and that the 

 children believe them to be fairies carrying their little 

 lanterns on their road to dance in the magic circle under 

 the leaves in the wood. Some say they die in a day ; 

 some say they live on for ages. Who shall tell ? They 

 look always the same.' 



On one side of my house was a much -neglected, but 



