A DEAD GLOW-WORM'S LIGHT 85 



green colour turned to dull blackish-green, did I get 

 rid of the feeling that it had some life in it. 



But the most striking instance of the continuance 

 or survival long after death of what has seemed an 

 attribute or manifestation of life remains to be told. 



One cloudy, very dark night at Boldre, I was going 

 home across a heath with some girls from a farm- 

 house where we had been visiting, when one of my 

 young companions cried out that she could see a 

 spark of fire on the road before us. We then all 

 saw it a small, steady, green light but on lighting 

 a match and looking closely at the spot, nothing 

 could we see except the loose soil in the road. 

 When the match went out the spark of green fire 

 was there still, and we searched again, turning the 

 loose soil with our fingers until we discovered the 

 dried and shrunken remains of a glow-worm of the 

 previous year. It had been trodden into the sand, 

 and the sand driven into it, until it was hard to 

 make out any glow-worm shape or appearance in it. 

 It was like a fragment of dry earth, and yet, so long 

 as it was in the dark, the small, brilliant green light 

 continued to shine from one end of it. Yet this 

 dried old case must have been dead and blown about 

 in the dust for at least seven or eight months. 



On going up to London I carried it with me in a 

 small box : there in a dark room it shone once more, 

 but the light was now much fainter, and on the 

 following evening there was no light. For some 



