Fireflies. 217 



beetle over an inch long with two large eye-like lights in 

 the thorax and the abdomen glowing like a living 

 emerald. It is singular that the life history of creatures 

 so numerous and so common should be almost unknown, 

 the theories on the subjeft being very conflidling. It is 

 an interesting field for exploration that awaits some 

 future biologist. Scientists are prone to set inordinate 

 value on names and genera, so the fireflies have been 

 placed amongst \\\^ Lampyridae, while the fire-beetles are 

 pronounced to belong to the Elateridae family, but where 

 the " cucuyo" as the Spaniards name him, (Pyrophorus 

 no€lilucus) emerges from the egg, or how he passes his 

 larval youth and acquires the power of shining in the 

 world, is still a matter of conje6lure. Rotten wood is 

 by some supposed to be the cradle of all this brilliancy, 

 while others hold that the imago, anticipating the votaries 

 of " Sweetness and Light" draws his nourishment from 

 the sugar-cane, and roams the earth in the humble guise 

 of a wire-worm. Every one has read how the Creole 

 ladies sometimes put diamonds to shame by wearing 

 fireflies in their hair and on their dresses at balls in 

 Cuba and the other islands, but one of the most pic- 

 turesque uses to which fireflies were ever put, was on the 

 evening the band of French settlt^rs first landed at 

 Montreal. Their first care was to raise an altar " on a 

 pleasant spot near at hand." Some of the high-born 

 ladies who were with them, decorated the sylvan altar 

 with such flowers as the place afforded, and then all the 

 company, soldiers, artisans, sailors and labourers, de- 

 voutly knelt on the sod while the Priest celebrated Mass, 

 and by and by when evening closed in and fireflies began 

 to twinkle around, the pious French emigrants captured 



