LUMINOUS INSECTS, 419 
appearance, and she inclosed them in a box until she 
should have an opportunity of drawing them, ‘placing it 
upon a table in her lodging-room. In the middle of the 
night the confined insects made such a noise as to awake 
her, and she opened the box, the inside of which to her 
great astonishment appeared all in a blaze; and in her 
fright letting it fall, she was not less surprised to see each 
of the insects apparently on fire. She soon, however, 
divined the cause of this unexpected phenomenon, and 
re-inclosed her brilliant guests in their place of confine- 
ment. She adds, that the light of one of these Fulgore 
is sufficiently bright to read a newspaper by: and though 
the tale of her having drawn one of these insects by its 
own light is without foundation, she doubtless might have 
done so if she had chosen?.—Another species (2. pyr- 
rhorynchus) is figured by Mr. Donovan in his Insects of 
India, of which the light, though from a smaller snout 
than that of /. laternaria, must assume a more splendid 
and striking appearance, the projection being of a rich 
deep purple from the base to near the apex, which is of 
a Ins. Sur. 49.—The above account of the luminous properties of 
Fulgora laternaria is given, because negative evidence ought not 
hastily to be allowed to set aside facts positively asserted by an au- 
thor whose veracity is unimpeached; but it is necessary to state, 
that not only have several of the inhabitants of Cayenne, according 
to the French Dictionnaire d’ Histoire Naturelle, denied that this 
insect, shines, in which denial they are joined by M. Richard, who 
reared the species (Encyclopédie, art. Fulgora); but the learned and 
~ accurate Count Hoffmansegg informs us, that his insect collector 
Sieber, a practised entomologist of thirty years standing, and who, 
when in the Brazils for some years, took many specimens, affirms 
that he never saw a single one in the least luminous. Der Gesells- 
chaft Naturf, Fr, xu Berlin Mag. 1. 153. 
PAN A 
