LUMINOUS INSECTS. 



335 



the same genus are luminous. Not fewer than twelve 

 species of this family are described by Illiger in the Berlin 

 Naturalist Society '$ Magazine 1 , 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. 2 



The brilliant nocturnal spectacle presented by these insects 

 to the inhabitants of the countries where they abound can- 

 not 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 : — 



" 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 other entomological facts, will 

 make you join in my regret that a more extensive acquaint- 

 ance with the science has not enabled him to spread his 

 embellishments over a greater number. The gratification 

 which the entomologist derives from seeng 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 least if 

 he be an admirer of the Darwinian style) as he reads for the 

 first time, 



" So sleeps in silence the Curculio, shut 

 In the dark chamber of the cavern'd nut ; 

 Erodes with ivory beak the vaulted shell, 

 And quits on filmy wings its narrow cell." 



But when the music of the lines has allowed him room for 

 pause, and he recollects that they are built wholly upon an 



1 Jahrgang, i. 141. 



2 Lacordaire, Introd. a V Entom. ii. 140. See Dr. Germar's monograph on 

 this genus, containing descriptions of seventy-nine species, in the Zeitschr. f. d. 

 Ent. vol.iii. (1841.) 



