110 CONTENT. 



would display very little light the next evening, even 

 under the excitement of being handled, and on the 

 following night w^ould be irrecoverably dark ; this may 

 have resulted from the lack of food or of exercise, not 

 I think from the lack of air or of moisture. 



Peter Martyr asserts that the natives of Hispa- 

 niola, at the time of the discovery, were in the habit 

 of tying one of these Glow-flies to each of their great 

 toes, when they journeyed by night through the 

 woods ; a thing not at all improbable. The two 

 insects would throw a considerable light around the 

 traveller's steps ; and if they should withhold their 

 luminosity, might easily be replaced by others freshly 

 caught. On this custom Sou they, in the beautiful 

 Poem already quoted, has founded a pretty inci- 

 dent. When Coatel was guiding Madoc through the 

 cavern, — 



" She beckoned, and descended, and drew out 

 From underneath her vest, a cage, or net 

 It rather might be called, so fine the twigs 

 Which knit it, where, confined, two fire-flies gave 

 Their lustre." Madoc, ii. xvii. 



Of the earlier stages of any of these light-bearing 

 insects I have been able to procure little information. 

 About the middle of May a larva of an Elateridous 

 beetle was brought to me which was luminous ; in 

 the dark the whole insect was pellucid, but the divi- 

 sions of the segments showed distinct light, blue and 

 pale, not very vivid. It was impatient of being 

 handled, and bit fiercely at the hand, but inef- 

 fectually. I suspect that it was the larva of the 

 Glow-fly: the specimen is now in the British Mu- 



