FORM OF THE GLOWWORM. 171 



To most of the dwellers in these her favourite resorts, the 

 person of our insect lamp-bearer, so conspicuously displayed 

 in her own light, must have been, we should suppose, familiar 

 (as with ourselves) from the summer nights of childhood, 

 from that night, in particular, never to be forgot, which first 

 brought one of these shining mysteries within the compass of 

 our fingers and a box. While of other little creepers we yet 

 scarce knew the difference betwixt head and tail, the figure of 

 our first captive glowworm, as seen at night, and examined 

 next morning, almost before daylight served, was stamped 

 upon our memory ; and, had we never seen another since, we 

 should not forget her tiny head and, as we called them, horns, 

 mocking our curious eye, as she just put forth and then 

 withdrew them under the shielding back-plate which covered 

 the fore part of her body ; that slate-coloured, oblong, flat, 

 wingless body, all divided into rings, and bearing at its nether 

 extremity the lamp, by night a lustrous emerald, by day a 

 dull pale spot, composed, as we have learnt now, of the 

 sulphur-coloured substance which supplies its light.* 



Of this article, by the way, though it costs her nothing, the 

 glowworm, it would seem, is somewhat economic; Gilbert 

 White, at least, confirmatory of Will Shakspeare, having 

 thought that she always puts out her light at the decent hour 

 of eleven or twelve, or begins then, according to the poet and 

 the poetic idea, to " pale her ineffectual fire." 



* See Vignette. 



