60 THE GLOW-WOKM. 



the Entomological Society as a circumstance equally new to 

 himself. Oddly enough, however, a few months later, Mr. Smith 

 received a notice of similar observations on several allied species 

 of these insects from M. Gueinzius at the Cape of Good Hope, 

 and twelve months after these observations of M. Gueinzius were 

 published, and nearly two years after the publication of our own, 

 Mr. Edward Newman inserted in the " Zoologist," a short note, 

 in which he announces that he has been familiar with the fact 

 for nearly thirty years. It seems, therefore, that, curious as it 

 is, there is nothing absolutely new in this discovery of " Bees 

 roosting by the mandibular process." 



No order of insects perhaps exhibits a greater variety of forms 

 and of corresponding habits than the Coleoptera, or Beetle tribe 

 not including, however, the so-called Black-beetle, that pest ot 

 most London houses, and of many country ones to boot, which in 

 reality is not a beetle at all, but a near connection of the cricket 

 and the grasshopper. In exchange for the " Black-beetle," the 

 coleopterist claims the Glow-worm, which is his of right, with a 

 good many of the " fire-flies " of tropic lands. It is now pretty 

 well known that it is the female Glow-worm alone that lights up 

 the little lamp to be seen in our hedgerows in summer, although 

 the poets have very commonly assigned the function to the male, 

 which is only slightly luminous, and is rarely seen. Thus 

 Shakspeare has 



" The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, 

 And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire." 



Cowper also, in his verses on the insect, does the same 



" Tis power Almighty bids him shine, 

 Nor bids him shine in vain." 



And Eogers, in his verses on the fire-flies of the Tusculan groves, 

 in his poem " Italy," gives us " him " and " his " throughout, in 

 his references to our own Glow-worm. Both Montgomery and 

 Moore, however, give the lady-beetle the credit that is her due, and 

 assign the true reason for the display, when, as the former says, 

 she lights her lamp 



" To captivate her favourite fly, 

 And tempt the rover through the dark." 



The light is most intense in those females which have only re- 



