A MIDNIGHT RAMBLE. 37 



discovery in a midnight journey on a canal "a fallen tree that 

 was wholly converted into a mass of diseased splendor, which 

 threw a ghastliness around." The strange fascination of the 

 scene invited him thither and evolved a train of moral philoso- 

 phy, in which he became so deeply absorbed that he missed his 

 boat and was obliged to " foot it " for miles with " a flambeau 

 from the old tree " to light his path. 



Another night-walker describes a phosphorescent log twenty- 

 four feet long "a mass of light." Fallen trees, bleached and 

 entirely devoid of bark, and innocent enough by day, are thus 

 frequently transfigured at night. Look! this brilliant glowworm 

 in your path! certainly so appearing but it proves to be only 

 a mimetic fragment of clean, bare twig, saturated with the bright 

 mycelium, though it would deceive a fire-fly. 



That was an observant poet, by-the-way, who jotted down the 

 following episode in his night stroll : 



" Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge, 

 The glowworm lights her gem, and through the dark 

 A moving radiance twinkles." 



The last line is especially felicitous and graphic, and brings vividly 

 to mind this animated spark down deep among the dewy grass. 



"What!" says the oracle Pliny to the star-gazing husbandman, 

 "standest thou staring still into the sky and holclest up thy nose 

 aloft into the aire ? Why searchest thou the course of starres ? 

 Hast thou not another brood-hen star, other Vergiliee, I say, even 

 before and under thy very feet ? I mean those pretty glo-wormes. 

 Surely these come duly at their set daies; these keep time with 

 those of heaven, as if they were linked to that star by some 

 neare affinitie in such sort as a man may resolve & hold for 

 certaine, that engendered they be no otherwise but by the influ- 

 ence thereof, the very brood and chickens of the aforesaid hen." 

 From all of which it may safely be inferred, at least, that these 

 insects are a much more conspicuous feature in foreign fields 

 than with us. 



