412 LUMINOUS INSECTS. 



Madame Merian ; but happily this error does not affect 

 his poetry. 



But to return from this digression. If we are to be- 

 lieve Mouffet, (and the story is not incredible,) the ap- 

 pearance of the tropical fire-flies on one occasion led to 

 a more important result than might have been expected 

 from such a cause. He tells us, that when Sir Thomas 

 Cavendish and Sir Robert Dudley first landed in the 

 West Indies, and saw in the evening an infinite number 

 of moving lights in the woods, which were merely these 

 insects, they supposed that the Spaniards were advan- 

 cing upon them, and immediately betook themselves to 

 their ships a : a result as well entitling the Elaters to a 

 commemoration feast, as a similar good, office the land- 

 crabs of Hispaniola, which, as the Spaniards tell, (and 

 the story is confirmed by an anniversary Fiesta de los 

 Cangrejos,) by their clattering mistaken by the enemy 

 for the sound of Spanish cavalry close upon their heels 

 in like manner scared away a body of English invaders 

 of the city of St. Domingo b . 



An anecdote less improbable, perhaps, and certainly 

 more ludicrous, is related by Sir J. E. Smith of the ef- 

 fect of the first sight of the Italian glow-worms upon 

 some Moorish ladies ignorant of such appearances. 

 These females had been taken prisoners at sea, and, 

 until they could be ransomed, lived in a house in the 

 outskirts of Genoa, where they were frequently visited by 

 the respectable inhabitants of the city ; a party of whom, 

 on going one evening, were surprised to find the house 

 closely shut up, and their Moorish friends in the greatest 

 grief and consternation. On inquiring into the cause, 



a 112. b Walton's Hispaniola, i. 39. 



