UNCLE IN ENGLAND. 35 



impatience for their sieging time to return, that I 

 may hear them. I am, however, already ac- 

 quainted with the robin redbreast. I have re- 

 peatedly heard its plaintive autumn song. 



I never rightly understood till now that the glow- 

 worm is the female fire-fly, though it looks just 

 like a worm, and does not fly. My aunt showed me 

 to-day that this insect, though it possesses neither 

 wings nor elytra, and differs but little in appear- 

 ance from a caterpillar, is, notwithstanding, an 

 insect in the last or perfect state : the head and 

 corselet are formed exactly like those of the male, 

 who is furnished with both elytra and wings. My 

 aunt also showed me that under the last ring of 

 the body there are two very small reservoirs of a 

 thick oily fluid of the nature of phosphorus, which, 

 if the animal is killed, continues to give light till 

 it becomes dry. It is a slow-moving creature I 

 am told, and seems to drag itself on by starts 

 or slight efforts. 



My uncle says that in the Philosophical Trans- 

 actions for 1684, there is a paper by a Mr. 

 Waller describing an English flying glow-worm, 

 which he observed at Northaw, in Hertford- 

 shire, the light of which was so vivid as to be 

 plainly perceived even when a candle was in the 

 room. 



Mary put a common glow-worm into a box of 

 transparent paper with some grass and moss, two 

 days ago ; and when we went to examine it last 



