418 LUMINOUS INSECTS. 
relations; of which idea it was some time before they 
could be divested.—The common people in Italy have a 
superstition respecting these insects somewhat similar, 
believing that they are of a spiritual nature, and proceed 
out of the graves, and hence carefully avoid them*. 
The insects hitherto adverted to have been beetles, or 
of the order Coleoptera. But besides these, a genus in 
the order Hemiptera, called Fulgora, includes several 
species which emit so powerful a light as to have obtain- 
ed in English the generic appellation of Lantern-flies. 
Two of the most conspicuous of this tribe are the 
F. laternaria and F. candelaria ; the former a native of 
South America, the latter of China. Both, as indeed 
is the case with the whole genus, have the material 
which diffuses their light included in a hollow subtrans- 
parent projection of the head. In &. candelaria this 
projection is of a subcylindrical shape, recurved at the 
apex, above an inch in length, and the thickness of a 
small quill. We may easily conceive, as travellers as-_ 
sure us, that a tree studded with multitudes of these 
living sparks, some at rest and others in motion, must 
at night have a superlatively splendid appearance.—In 
EF, laternaria, which is an insect two or three inches 
long, the snout is much larger and broader, and more 
of an oval shape, and sheds a light the brilliancy of 
which transcends that of any other luminous insect. 
Madam Merian informs us, that the first discovery 
which she made of this property caused her no small 
alarm. ‘The Indians had brought her several of these 
insects, which by day-light exhibited no extraordinary 
2 Tour onthe Continent, 2d Edit. iti. 85, 
