224 SUMMER 



lover. There is some excuse for calling her a worm, for she 

 is a very plain creeping creature, and has not much of the 

 true beetle air, owing to her complete lack of wing-cases. 

 Even the plant-bugs, with their curtailed shards, are more 

 beetle-like than she. She is a dingy grey above, while the 

 lower segments of her abdomen, from which the light pro- 

 ceeds, are pale and mottled. She lifts the tip of her 

 abdomen when she shines, as we can see by examining her 

 with the rival light of a wax match. The glow-worm is our 

 English firefly, but, unlike those southern beetles, only the 

 female glows, and she is stationary. The light varies much 

 in colour, apparently with the warmth of the weather ; but in 

 the dampest nights, when the glow-worm sets her lamp, it is 

 still stronger and steadier than the phosphorescent shimmer 

 of the millipede. Millipedes stand to centipedes as centi- 

 pedes to creatures with the normal pair or two of legs. They 

 are packed with threadlike legs on both sides of their long 

 thin bodies, and they walk like the movement of fine water- 

 weeds in a current. The two families are not now held to 

 be very closely related, and though neither rank as insects 

 millipedes are perhaps the more insect-like of the two. 

 Millipedes shelter under logs and in other moist places, like 

 wood-lice, and can be sometimes seen shining on the walls 

 of damp sheds. Probably their light is also a signal, and 

 they badly need some such guide ; for their eyes are very 

 much atrophied, and they feel their way by constant use of 

 their little antennas. 



It is a curious speculation whether the droning-beetle 

 hears the noise of his own flight, and the taps of the death- 

 watch make this seem less improbable than might be 

 thought. There is little room for doubt that the death- 

 watch beetles signal to each other by their well-known click- 

 ing, much as the female glow-worm uses her light. The 



