ORDER V. COLEOPTERA. — FIRE-FLIES. 285 
arquebuses ready to fire. “In these countries,” says M. Michelet, “one 
travels much by night to escape from the heat. But one would not dare to 
plunge into the peopled shades of the deep forest if these insects did not 
reassure the traveller. He sees them shining afar off, dancing, twisting 
about ; he sees them near at hand, on the bushes by his side; he takes them 
with him; he fixes them on his boots, so that they may show him his road 
and put to flight the serpents ; but when the sun rises, gratefully and care- 
fully he places them on a shrub, and restores them to their amorous occu- 
pations. It is a beautiful Indian proverb that says, ‘Carry away the fire-fly, 
but restore it from whence thou tookest it.’ ” 
The Creole women make use of the Cucuyos to increase the splendor of 
their toilets. Strange jewels! which must be fed, which must be bathed 
twice a day, and must be incessantly taken care of, to prevent them from 
dying. The Indians catch these insects by balancing hot coals in the air at 
the end of a stick to attract them, which proves that the light which these 
insects diffuse is to attract. Once in the hands of the women, the Cucuyos 
are shut up in little cages of very fine wire, and fed on fragments of sugar- 
cane. When the Mexican ladies wish to adorn themselves with these living 
diamonds, they place them in little bags of light tulle, which they arrange 
with taste on their skirts. There is another way of mounting the Cucuyos. 
They pass a pin, without hurting them, under the thorax, and stick this pin in 
their hair. The refinement of elegance consists in combining with the Cucuyos 
humming-birds and real diamonds, which produce a dazzling head-dress. 
Sometimes, imprisoning these animated flames in gauze, the graceful Mexican 
women twist them into ardent necklaces, or else roll them round their waists, 
like a fiery girdle. They go toa ball under a diadem of living topazes, of 
animated emeralds, and this diadem blazes or pales according as the insect 
is fresh or fatigued. When they return home, after the so¢rée, they make 
them take a bath, which refreshes them, and put them back again into the 
eage, which sheds, during the whole night, a soft light in the chamber. In 
1766, a Cucuyo, brought alive from America to Paris, probably in some 
old piece of wood which happened to be on the vessel, caused great terror 
to the inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Antoine when they saw it flying in 
the evening, glittering in the air. In 1864, a number of Cucuyos were 
brought from Mexico to Paris by M. Laurent, captain of the frigate La 
Floride. An experiment, made in the laboratory of the Ecole Normal, 
showed that the spectrum of their light is continuous, without any black 
rays; it differs, besides, from the spectrum of the solar light by a greater 
‘intensity of the yellow color. The light is produced probably, as it is in 
the case of the Lampyris, by the slow combustion of a substance secreted 
by the animal. The Cucuyo can, nevertheless, at will, increase or diminish 
NO. XVII. 89 
