LUMINOUS INSECTS. 417 
more important result than might have been expected from 
such a cause. He tells us, that when Sir Thomas Caven- 
dish and Sir Robert Dudley first landed in the West 
Indies, and saw in the evening an infinite number of 
moving lights in the woods, which were merely these in- 
sects, they supposed that the Spaniards were advancing 
upon them, and immediately betook themselves to their 
ships? :—a result as well entitling the Elaters to a com- 
memoration feast, as a similar good office the land-crabs 
of Hispaniola, which, as the Spaniards tell, (and the story 
is confirmed by an anniversary Fiesta de lés Cangrejos,) 
by their clattering—mistaken by the enemy for the 
sound of Spanish cavalry close upon their heels—in like 
manner scared away a body of English invaders of the 
city of St. Domingo ®. ) 
An anecdote less improbable, perhaps, and certainly 
more ludicrous, is related by Sir James Smith of the ef- 
fect of the first sight of the Italian fire-flies upon some 
Moorish ladies ignorant of such appearances. ‘These 
females had been taken prisoners at sea, and, until they 
could be ransomed, lived in a house in the outskirts of 
Genoa, where they were frequently visited by the re- 
spectable inhabitants of the city; a party of whom, on 
going one evening, were surprised to find the house 
closely shut up, and their Moorish friends in the greatest 
grief and consternation. On inquiring into the cause, 
they ascertained that some of the Lampyris italica had 
found their way into the dwelling, and that the ladies 
within had taken it into their heads that these brilliant 
guests were no other than the troubled spirits of their 
ae: b Walton’s Hispaniola, i, 39. 
VOL. II. 2E 
