506 LUMINOUS INSECTS. 
and the faces of those asleep, and devour them.!— These insects are also 
applied to purposes of decoration. On certain festival days, in the month 
of June, they are collected in great numbers, and tied all over the garments 
of the young people, who gallop through the streets on horses similarly 
ornamented, producing on a dark evening the effect of a large moving body 
of light. On such occasions the lover displays his gallantry by decking his 
mistress with these living gems.* And according to P. Martire, “ many 
wanton wilde fellowes” rub their faces with the flesh of a killed Cucuius, 
as boys with us use phosphorus, “ with purpose to meet their neighbours 
with a flaming countenance,” and derive amusement from their fright. 
Besides Hiater noctilucus, E, ignitus and several others of the same 
genus are luminous. Not fewer than twelve species of this family are de» 
scribed by Illiger in the Berlin Naturalist Society's Magazine®, under the 
name of Pyrophorus; and at least seventy species are now known, all 
natives of the hot and temperate regions of America, from Chili to the 
south of the United States, where they are to be seen almost the whole 
year at the approach of night, both the sexes being equally luminous.4 
The brilliant nocturnal spectacle presented by these insects to the inha- 
bitants of the countries where they abound cannot be better described than 
in the language of the poet above referred to, who has thus related its first 
effect upon the British visitors of the new world :— 
@. . 4s + « « « « Sorrowing we beheld 
The night come on; but soon did night display 
More wonders than it veil’d: innumerous tribes 
From the wood-cover swarm’d, and darkness made 
Their beauties visible; one while they stream’d 
A bright blue radiance upon flowers that closed 
Their gorgeous colours from the eye of day ; 
Now motionless and dark, eluded search, 
Self-shrouded; and anon, starring the sky, 
Rose like a shower of fire.” 
The beautiful poetical imagery with which Mr. Southey has decorated 
this and a few cthet entomological facts, will make you join in my regret 
that a more extensive acquaintance with the science has not enabled him 
to spread his embellishments over a greater number. The gratification 
which the entomologist derives from seeing his favourite study adorned 
with the graces of poetry is seldom unalloyed with pain, arising from the 
inaccurate knowledge of the subject in the poet. Dr. Darwin’s description 
of the beetle to which the nut-maggot is transformed, may delight him (at 
1 P. Martire, ubi supra. Dr. Burmeister disbelieves this account, because Elaters 
are not carnivorous, but feed upon nectar and pollen (Manual, ay but consider- 
ing what numerous exceptions we are constantly finding occur to all such supposed 
general rules, it seems premature to reject on such grounds the very circumstantial 
details of P. Martire. In the same way as some of the Carabide and Coccinellide 
have been ascertained to feed on vegetable food, though both families are in general 
carnivorous, it may he found that some of the Zlateride prefer an animal diet and 
will eat gnats. 
2 Walton’s Present State of the Spanish Colonies, i. 128. 
5 Jahrgang, i. 141. * 
4 Lacordaire, Introd. 4 ?Entom. ii, 140, See Dr. Germar’s monograph on this 
genus, containing descriptions of seventy-nine species, in the Zeitschr. f. d. Znt. 
vol. iii. (1841,) : 
