416 LUMINOUS INSECTS. 



may convey the light body of an insect to the above- 

 mentioned distance from land, you will not dispute when 

 you call to mind that our friend Hooker, in his interesting 

 Tour in Iceland, tells us. that the ashes from the eruption 

 of one of the Icelandic volcanos in 1755 were conveyed 

 to Ferrol, a distance of upwards of 300 miles a . Lastly, 

 to conclude my list of luminous insects, Professor Afze- 

 lius observed "a dim phosphoric light" to be emitted 

 from the singular hollow antennae ofPausus spfuerocerus b . 

 A similar appearance has been noticed in the eyes of 

 Acronycta Psz 9 Cossus ligniperda, and other moths. 

 Chiroscells bifenestrata of Lamarck, a beetle, has two red 

 oval spots covered with a downy membrane on the se- 

 cond segment of the abdomen, which he thinks indicate 

 some particular organ perhaps luminous : and M. La- 

 treille informs me that a friend of his, who saw one living 

 which was brought from China to the Isle of France in 

 wood, found that the ocelli in the elytra of Buprestis 

 ocellata were luminous. 



But besides the insects here enumerated, others may 

 be luminous which have not hitherto been suspected of 

 being so. This seems proved by the following fact. A 

 learned friend d has informed me, that when he was cu- 

 rate of Ickleton, Cambridgeshire, in 1 780, a farmer of 

 that place of the name of Simpringham brought to him 

 a mole-cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris, Latr.), and told 



been recorded, as that in Hungary, 20th November 1672 (Ephem. 

 Nat. Curios. 1673. 80.), and one mentioned in the newspapers of 

 July 2d, 1810, to have fallen in France the January preceding, ac- 

 companied by a shower of red snow, may evidently be explained in 

 the same manner. 



3 p. 407. b Linn. Trans, iv. 261. 



Latr. Hist. Nat. x. 262. d Rev. Dr. Sutton of Norwich. 



