The Zoologist— March, 1869. 1581 



There are other species also, more nearly represented by our English 

 glow-worm, that haunt especially damp situations ; on one side of the 

 road leading to the house is a deep gully, conducting a little stream to 

 a small lake of water: this road, on such evenings, presents a mar- 

 vellous sight — the whole of the gully is lighted up with thousands of 

 sparks. I am not romancing, they are in thousands ; and the wonder- 

 ful part of the sight is, that while many of these rank and file evidently 

 wander only according to their individual will, there are others, and 

 these the majority, which keep perfect time and sway in their flashings 

 one with another ! For perhaps twenty yards you see every light (of 

 this second set of lights) evenly and slowly flying in one direction ; 

 then all at once in a moment every light will vanish; in the next 

 moment every Hght flashes forth again, and progresses in another 

 direction : it is impossible to resist the conviction that all are acting 

 in harmony and conjunction with each other, and that the impulse of 

 forward progression and then of a momentary obscuration of light, and 

 then again of a brilliant simultaneous flash and another onward move- 

 ment at another angle, is felt by each individual and directed by one, 

 the leader of the brilliant well-drilled band. The sight (when one 

 remembers that these are insects, and not birds or beasts) is quite 

 startUng, so complete is the precision of united action, and so con- 

 tinuous ! going on, for anything I know, all the evening or all night 

 long : 1 can call to mind no parallel to it, not even an actual parallel 

 in birds or fishes ! — p. 149. 



Cetoniadee and Lucanidoi. — My night excursions have supplied to 

 me a fine series of two not uuconnnon but handsome and characteristic 

 Brazilian species, one of the Cetoniadae and one of the Lucanidse. 

 There is a little clump of dwarf bushes by the side of the rivulet, on 

 which, by accident, 1 threw ray bull's-eye light : I saw a couple of 

 fine beetles, somewhat allied to our stag-beetle, which had just alighted 

 on an outside twig, obviously with some distinct intention. I let them 

 alone and watched them ; they travelled quickly along the twig, down 

 the branch, down the stem, till they got nearly to the ground, and 

 then 1 discovered their object : the little stem was bleeding, giving 

 forth gummy sap from some cracks in the bark; round this were 

 collected three or four specimens of beetles and a iavr moths; the 

 former 1 carefully secured ; and by marking the bush and searching 

 during daylight for others like it, and then examining each occasionally 

 when the weather iuvited an evening stroll, 1 managed to get a fine 

 series o!' L'xam])ks. — p. I5l. 



