74 Notes and Queries. [No. 1, 



numbers may not have been actually more than are often congregated 

 in Bengal. The light of this great body of insects was given out as I 

 have said, in rythmic flashes, and, for a second or two, lighted up the 

 bushes in a beautiful manner ; heightened, no doubt, by the sudden 

 relapse into darkness which followed each flash. These are the facts 

 of the case (and I may add, it was towards the end of the year), and 

 the only suggestion I would throw out, to account for the unusual 

 method of luminous emanation, is, that the close congregation of large 

 numbers of insects, from the small space afforded them by the bushes 

 in question, may have given rise to the synchronous emission of the 

 flash, by the force of imitation or sympathy. 



Mr. Montgomery, of the Survey Department here, also fully corro- 

 borates the habit of our Pegu fireflies simultaneously emitting their 

 light, but adds, he has only remarked it under conditions similar 

 to those described above, in low swampy ground. It still remains, 

 therefore, to be decided if the insect is different from the ordinary one, 

 or if, as I am inclined to think, the simultaneity is produced by sym- 

 pathy and great crowding of individuals. 



Whilst my pen is in my hand, I would add a few words on the 

 address of Dr. J. E. Gray to the Zoological Section of the British 

 Association, printed at page 75 of the Notices and Abstracts appended 

 to the Report of the Association for 1864. 



The excellent remarks on the aim and arrangement of Public 

 Museums will, it is to be hoped, not escape the attention of those 

 interested in our own Calcutta Museum, and the especial stress he lays 

 on the exclusion of light from collections on spirits, is what I urgent •* 

 ly brought to the notice of the Society but a short time since. It is 

 not, however, to this portion of Dr. Gray's address that I would now 

 refer, but to the statement at page 82 that, " the natives of India and 

 of the islands of the Malayan Archipelago have brought into a semi* 

 domesticated state various species of wild cattle, such as the Gyal, the 

 Gour, and the Banteng." 



Of the first of these, the Gyal, we know that such is the case, but 

 I should much like to know in what part of India or Malaynesia the 

 Gour or the Banteng are " semi-domesticated," certainly, the feat has 

 never been performed by any " native of India" of whose geography 

 and powers incurably lax notions appeax to be stereotyped in England, 



