366 SUPPLEMENT 



Callirhipis and Rhipicera, which is also from New Hol- 

 land. 



We now come to the genus Lampyris. The Greeks p-ave 

 indiscriminately the names of lampyris, and the Latins those 

 of cicindela, noctiluca, lucio, luciola, lucernuta, incendula, 

 to all those insects, which have the property of shedding 

 during the night a phosphoric light. This same property has 

 caused them to be vulgarly termed glow-worms. The mo- 

 dern entomologists ought, without doubt, to have applied 

 themselves to arrange insects under the same denomination, 

 only in proportion as they present the same generic charac- 

 ters ; but as it is only by long observations and continued 

 labours that this final end of science can be attained, the 

 lampyris proper were for a long time confounded with tele- 

 phorus and malachius, under the name of cantharis. Geoff- 

 roy, in separating them from telephori, has nevertheless 

 associated them with lyciis, and Linnaeus has again associated 

 them with lycus and pyrochrus. Fabricius, enlightened by 

 the errors of his predecessors, was the first who pi'operly dis- 

 tinguished this genus, and assigned to it its particular cha- 

 racters. 



All the insects which emit light, could not have failed to 

 arrest the attention of the observers of nature ; accordingly, 

 the lampyrides have been for a long time very well known to 

 naturalists. They received the name of glow-worms, because 

 the females, which are most frequently met with, are de- 

 prived of wings, and all these females emit light during the 

 night. Some males are deprived of this faculty of shining, 

 or possess it only in a feeble degree. The luminous faculty 

 of the glow-worms is situated underneath the two or three 

 last rings of the abdomen. These are yellow spots, from 

 which proceeds, during darkness or obscurity, a very lively 

 light, of a greenish or bluish white, as is the case with all 



