506 LUMINOUS INSECTS. 



and the faces of those asleep, and devour them. 1 These insects are also 

 applied to purposes of decoration. On certain festival days, in the month 

 of June, they are collected in great numbers, and tied all over the garments 

 of the young people, who gallop through the streets on horses similarly 

 ornamented, producing on a dark evening the effect of a large moving body 

 of light. On such occasions the lover displays his gallantry by decking his 

 mistress with these living gerns. 3 And according to P. Martire, " many 

 wanton wilde fellowes" rub their faces with the flesh of a killed Cucuius, 

 as boys with us use phosphorus, " with purpose to meet their neighbours 

 with a flaming countenance," and derive amusement from their fright. 



Besides Elater noctilucus, E. ignitus and several others of the same 

 genus are luminous. Not fewer than twelve species of this family are de- 

 scribed by Illiger in the Berlin Naturalist Society's Magazine 3 , under the 

 name of Pyrophorus ; and at least seventy, species are now known, all 

 natives of the hot and temperate regions of America, from Chili to the 

 south of the United States, where they are to be seen almost the whole 

 year at the approach of night, both the sexes being equally luminous. 4 



^ The brilliant nocturnal spectacle presented by these insects to the inha- 

 bitants of the countries where they abound cannot be better described than 

 in the language of the poet above referred to, who has thus related its first 

 effect upon the British visitors of the new world : 



" Sorrowing we beheld 



The night come on ; but soon did night display 

 More wonders than it veil'd : innumerous tribes 

 From the wood-cover swarm'd, and darkness made 

 Their beauties visible : one while they stream'd 

 A bright blue radiance upon flowers that closed 

 Their gorgeous colours from the eye of day ; 

 Now motionless and dark, eluded search, 

 Self-shrouded ; and anon, starring the sky, 

 Rose like a shower of fire." 



The beautiful poetical imagery with which Mr. Southey has decorated 

 this and a few other entomological facts, will make you join in my regret 

 that a more extensive acquaintance with the science has not enabled him 

 to spread his embellishments over a greater number. The gratification 

 which the entomologist derives from seeing his favourite study adorned 

 with the graces of poetry is seldom unalloyed with pain, arising from the 

 inaccurate knowledge of the subject in the poet. Dr. Darwin's description 

 of the beetle to which the nut-maggot is transformed, may delight him (at 



> 



1 P. Martire, ubi supra. Dr. Burmeister disbelieves this account, because Elaters 

 are not carnivorous, but feed upon nectar and pollen {Manual, 492.) ; but consider- 

 ing what numerous exceptions we are constantly finding occur to all such supposed 

 general rules, it seems premature to reject on such grounds the very circumstantial 

 details of P. Martire. In the same way as some of the Carabidce and Coccinellidce 

 have been ascertained to feed on vegetable food, though both families are in general 

 carnivorous, it may he found that some of the Elateridcs prefer an animal diet and 

 will eat gnats. 



2 Walton's Present State of the Spanish Colonies, i. 128. 



3 Jahrgang, i. 141. 



4 Lacordaire, Introd. a VEntom. ii. 140, See Dr. Germar's monograph on this 

 genus, containing descriptions of seventy- nine species, in the Zeitschr. f. d. Ent. 

 vol. iii. (1841.) 



