336 



LUMINOUS INSECTS. 



incorrect supposition, the Curculio never inhabiting the nut 

 in its beetle shape, nor employing its ivory or rather ebony 

 beak upon it, but undergoing its transformation under ground, 

 he feels disappointed that the passage has not truth as well as 

 sound. Mr. Southey, too, has fallen into an error: he con- 

 founds the fire-fly of St. Domingo {Elater noctilucus) with a 

 quite different insect, the lantern-fly (Fulgora laternaria) of 

 Madame Merian ; but happily this error does not affect his 

 poetry. 



But to return from this digression. — If we are to believe 

 Mouffet (and the story is not incredible), the appearance of 

 the tropical fire-flies on one occasion led to a more important 

 result than might have been expected from such a cause. 

 He tells us, that when Sir Thomas Cavendish and Sir Ro- 

 bert Dudley first landed in the West Indies, and saw in the 

 evening an infinite number of moving lights in the woods, 

 which were merely these insects, they supposed that the 

 Spaniards were advancing upon them, and immediately be- 

 took themselves to their ships 1 : — a result as well entitling 

 the Elaters to a commemoration feast as a similar good office 

 the land-crabs of Hispaniola, which, as the Spaniards tell 

 (and the story is confirmed by an anniversary Fiesta de los 

 Cangrejos), by their clattering — mistaken by the enemy for 

 the sound of Spanish cavalry close upon their heels — in like 

 manner scared away a body of English invaders of the city of 

 St. Domingo. 2 



An anecdote less improbable, perhaps, and certainly more 

 ludicrous, is related by Sir J. E. Smith of the effect of the 

 first sight of the Italian glow-worms upon some Moorish 

 ladies ignorant of such appearances. These females had been 

 taken prisoners at sea, and, until they could be ransomed, 

 lived in a house in the outskirts of Genoa, where they were 

 frequently visited by the respectable inhabitants of the city ; 

 a party of whom, on going one evening, were surprised to 

 find the house closely shut up, and their Moorish friends in 

 the greatest grief and consternation. On inquiring into the 

 cause, they ascertained that some of the Pygolampis Italica 



i 112. 



2 Walton's Hispaniola, i. 39. 



