62 LIVING LIGHTS. 



Dr. Kidder thus refers to the brilliancy of one of these 

 wondrous light-givers : u Before retracing my steps, I stood 

 for a few moments looking down into the Cimmerian black- 

 ness of the gulf before me ; and, while thus gazing, a lumi- 

 nous mass seemed to start from the very centre. I watched 

 it as it floated up, revealing in its slow flight the long leaves 

 of the palm Euterpe edulis, and the minuter foliage, of other 

 trees. It came directly towards me, lighting up the gloom 

 around with its three luminosities, which I could now dis- 

 tinctly see." 



The insect was the Pyrophorus noctilucus ; a longish click- 

 beetle of a dull blackish-brown color, and covered over with 

 a short, slight-brown pubescence. When walking or at rest, 

 the chief light that it emits proceeds from the two yellow 

 tubercles on the ' thorax, so conspicuous in dead specimens ; 

 but, when flying, another luminous spot is discernible on the 

 hinder part of the thorax, and this is continued to the under 

 side of the insect. 



Ovideo says that the Indians travel in the night with 

 these insects fixed to their hands and feet; and that they 

 spin, weave, paint, dance, etc., by their light. In Prescott's 

 " Conquest of Mexico," we are told that in 1520, when the 

 Spaniards visited that country, "the air was filled with the 

 Cucujo, a species of large beetle, which emits an intense 

 phosphoric light from its body, strong enough to enable one 

 to read by it. These wandering flies, seen in the darkness 

 of the night, were converted, by the excited imaginations of 

 the besieged, into an army of matchlocks." 



At the time of the discovery of Hispaniola, Peter Martyr 

 assures us that the natives, in their night journeyings through 

 the woods, were in the habit of fastening a number of these 



