INSECTA— GLOW WORM... BEETLE. 823 



trank, which it buries in the skin, and through which it sucks the blood in 

 large quantities. The body appears to be all over curiously adorned with a 

 suit of polished sable armor, neatly joined, and beset with multitudes of 

 sharp pins, almost like the quills of a porcupine. It has six legs, the joints 



of which are so adapted, that it can, as it were, fold them up one within an- 

 other ; and when it leaps, they all spring out at once, whereby its whole 

 strength is exerted, and the body raised above two hundred times its own 

 diameter. 



THE GLOW WORM.i 



No two insects can differ more than the male and the female of this 

 species from each other. The male is in every respect a beetle, having 

 cases to its wings, and rising in the air at pleasure ; the female, on the con- 

 trary, has none, but is entirely a creeping insect, and is obliged to wait the 

 approaches of her capricious companion. The body of the female has eleven 

 joints, with a shield breast-plate, the shape of which is oval ; the head is 

 placed over this, and is very small, and the three last joints of her body are 

 of a yellowish color; but what distinguishes it from all other animals, is 

 the shining light which it emits by night, and which is supposed by some 

 philosophers to be an emanation which she sends forth to aUure the male to 

 her company. 



THE BEETLE. 2 



Of the beetle there are various kinds ; all, however, concurring in one 

 common formation of having cases to their wings, which are the more 



1 Lampyris nocUluca, Lin. 



* The order Cokoptera has four wings, of which the two upper ones are in the form of 

 cases; mandililes and jaws for mastication; under wings folded across; elytra crustace- 

 ous and the suture straight. 



