608 LUMINOUS INSEC7S, 
Lamarck, a beetle, has two red oval spots covered with a downy membrane 
on the second segment of the abdomen, which he thinks indicate some 
particular organ, perhaps luminous! ; and M. Latreille informed me that a 
friend of his, who saw one living which was brought from China to the Isle 
of France in wood, found that the ocedli in the elytra of Buprestis ocellata 
were luminous. One of the longicorn beetles, Dadoychus flavocinctus 
Chevrolat (allied to Saperda), has the third and fourth segments of the 
abdomen with the same yellow colour and appearance of the luminous seg- 
ments of the Lampyride, whence M. Chevrolat infers that it is like them 
luminous ; and M. de Laporte informs him that a considerable number of 
Brazilian Helopide, allied to Stenochia, present a similar character indicating 
a like property.* 
The insects hitherto adyerted to have been beetles, or of the order Cole- 
optera. But besides these, a genus in the order Hemiptera, called Fulgora, 
includes several species which are supposed to emit so powerful a light as to 
have obtained in English the generic appellation of Lantern-flies. Two of the 
most conspicuous of this tribe are the J’, daternaria and I’. candelaria; the 
former a native of South America, the latter of China. Both, as indeed is 
the case with the whole genus, are supposed to have the material which 
diffuses their light included in a subtransparent projection of the head. In 
F. candelaria this projection is of a subcylindrical shape, recurved at the 
apex, above an inch in length, and the thickness of a small quill. In F. 
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 bril- 
liancy of which is said to transcend that of any other luminous insect. 
Madame 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 daylight exhibited no extraordinary 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 MBE eotedl phenomenon, and re-inclosed her brilliant guests 
in their place of confinement. 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 foun- 
dation, she doubtless might have done so if she had chosen. 
1 Latr. Hist. Nat. x. 262. 
2 Chevrolat in Silbermann’s Rev, Entom. i. t. 14. 
5 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 author who could have no conceivable motive for inventing 
such a fable; 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 (Zncyclopédie, 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 tho least luminous. (Der Gessellschaft Naturf. Fr. 
zu Berlin Mag. i. 153.) On the other hand M. Lacordaire states that, though he 
neyer saw a luminous individual of this species, either in Brazil or Cayenne, and 
