ON THE GLOW-WORM AND ITS LARVA. 87 
luminosity exists in the larva at the very moment that it quits 
the egg, and that he has repeatedly seen it at that early period 
of its life. That the light proceeds from two little lobes on the 
ventral surface of the twelfth segment of the abdomen, which 
are the only parts that transmit light. He has also noticed that 
this larva shines always more brilliantly when disturbed, and that 
a full grown larva, under such circumstances, will give out. its 
light—which it seems to have some control over—almost as 
brilliantly as the perfect insect, and that it shines the whole 
night through, but always when undisturbed far less brightly 
than the perfect female. 
This paper contains the most satisfactory statement on this 
subject, as well as the various other stages of the glow worm’s 
life, that I can find. But to proceed, in Wilson and Duncan’s 
Entomology of Edinburgh, the glow worm is also treated of at 
very great length, and the former of these gentlemen has like- 
wise reared the larve from the eggs, and has described most fully 
their habits and modes of life; but he observed no luminous 
appearance whatever in them until they became pupe. The 
eggs were laid towards the end of July, and the larve were 
hatched a few weeks afterwards, and underwent their transfor- 
mations at the end of June in the following year. 
I may here remark, that when I emptied the paper out of 
the bottle in which my glow worms had been confined, I discovered 
a few eggs attached to it, but the only remark I made on them, 
was that they were large for the size of the insect, and covered 
over and fastened to the paper by a glutinous secretion of a bright 
yellow colour. As I had no intention then of breeding the insect 
I flung the eggs away. 
Although from the time of De Geer, it seems generally 
admitted by authors that these larve are luminous, yet it seems 
very singular that those who noticed this peculiarity have not made 
more particular mention or taken more notice ofit. All Ican say 
is that I have the larva before me, and I can see no difference 
whatever, between the light of it and of the perfect female, they 
seem both equally bright, and in my own opinion the light pro- 
ceeds not only from the two lobes mentioned by Mr. Newport, 
