228 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
opinion, that the insect was capable of withholding the light for an 
indefinite time, as he found that when alarmed they at once disappeared. 
Mr. Pascoe remarked that it would be very desirable that entomologists 
abroad should pay some attention to these “ fire-flies”; they seem to vary 
in different localities. Mr. M‘Lachlan had just told him that he had been 
informed when in Sydney that in the country to the north the “ fire-fly”” was 
a Dipterous insect. ‘ 
The Rev. H. 8. Gorham stated that the term “ fire-fly” was applied 
to all luminous insects indiscriminately. In the district where Mr. Pascoe’s 
specimen occurred there were perhaps fifty species of highly phos- 
phorescent Coleoptera. With regard to our species, Lampyris noctiluca, 
he did not think that the insect had the power of suddenly with- 
drawing its light, having often handled and irritated them with a view to 
the experiment. He was of opinion that the light of the female L. noctiluca 
is certainly brighter when the insect is unimpregnated ; after which it ceases 
to be so brilliant. Mr. Gorham believed that the so-called “ flashing” was 
often simply due to the creature crawling over leaves and herbage, and thus 
exposing the ventral surface only at times. 
Mr. M‘Lachlan remarked that the subject of the simultaneous flashing 
of fire-flies had been brought under the notice of the Society in 1865 by 
the Rev. Hamlet Clark (see Proc. Ent. Soc., ser. iii., vol. ii., pp. 94, 101), 
and that he had at that time advanced the opivion that the phenomenon in 
question might be caused by currents of air inducing the insects to simul- 
taneously change their direction of flight. He was of opinion that the 
common glow-worm was not capable of extinguishing its light when alarmed, 
as he had captured large numbers in a net at the same time, the insects 
nevertheless continuing to shine. 
Mr. Osbert Salvin stated that in the Central American region he had 
observed that a luminous Elaterid, Pyrophorus, had a straight flight. 
Sir Sidney Saunders stated that in the South of Europe (Corfu and 
Albania) the simultaneous flashing of Luciola italica, with intervals of 
complete darkness for some seconds, was constantly witnessed in the calm 
summer nights, when swarming myriads were to be seen far and near 
obeying this peculiar instinct of their race. He did not concur in the 
hypothesis propounded by Mr. M‘Lachlan, that currents of air might induce 
a number of these insects simultaneously to change the direction of their 
flight, and thereby occasion a momentary concealment of their light, which 
would seem to imply a continuous luminosity, casually occulted; whereas 
the flashes are certainly intermittent, as shown by the difficulty experienced 
in capturing a specimen flying in the open, close at hand, when the flash 
becomes extinguished before the object can be attained, to be renewed for 
an instant at the distance of several feet. The simultaneous character of 
these corruscations, among vast swarms, would seem to depend upon an 
