THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST 
VoL. x1x.—SEPTEMBER, 1885.—No. 9. 
THE REPUTATION OF THE LANTERN FLY. 
BY JOHN C. BRANNER, 
N nearly every part of Brazil one may hear the most incredible 
stories of a deadly insect, the very name of which inspires the 
greatest awe. When I first heard these stories of the terrible 
gitiranabota, tiranaboia, etc., as it is called, I was naturally rather 
skeptical, but continually lisanin them repeated and testified to, 
not only by the common people but even by men of education 
and standing, and seeing in print accounts of the devastation 
wrought by this insect, I was finally induced to inquire into its 
existence and character. 
_ To give an idea of the popular opinion of the gitiranaġóta, I need 
only give a few specimens of the stories that are told of it. The 
prevailing opinion is, that it is about the size of our seventeen- 
year locust or a little larger, having a long poisonous beak pro- 
jecting from its large head; that it has great powers of flight, 
and when, in its wild career, it strikes any living object—if an 
animal, no matter how large or powerful—it falls dead upon the 
spot; if a tree it soon wilts and dies. 
A certain distinguished Brazilian engineer corroborated the 
general truth of these stories, and assured me that along the 
Amazonas a monkey might sometimes be seen among the top- 
most branches of a lofty tree, when all of a sudden he would 
come tumbling down dead, without any apparent cause, struck by 
the fatal gittranaboia. An extract from a Spanish American news- 
paper was shown me a couple of years ago in which this insect 
was spoken of as destroying the cattle of Brazil in the grazing 
country of the southern provinces. In Para I was assured that 
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