LUMINOUS INSECTS. 



337 



had found their way into the dwelling, and that the ladies 

 within had taken it into their heads that these brilliant guests 

 were no other than the troubled spirits of their relations ; of 

 which idea it was some time before they could be divested. — . 

 The common people in Italy have a superstition respecting 

 these insects somewhat similar, believing that they are of a 

 spiritual nature, and proceed out of the graves, and hence 

 carefully avoid them. 1 



In addition to the Lampyridce and Elateridce, it seems 

 probable that other coleopterous families include luminous 

 species. ChirosceJis bifenestrata of 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 par- 

 ticular organ, perhaps luminous 2 ; 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 

 ocelli in the elytra of Buprestis ocellata were luminous. One 

 of the longicorn beetles, Dadoychus flavocinctus Chevrolat 

 (allied to Saperdd), has the third and fourth segments of the 

 abdomen with the same yellow colour and appearance of the 

 luminous segments of the Lampyridce, whence M. Chevrolat 

 infers that it is like them luminous ; and M. de Laporte 

 informs him that a considerable number of Brazilian Helen 

 pidce, allied to Stenochia, present a similar character indicating 

 a like property. 3 



The insects hitherto adverted to have been beetles, or of 

 the order Coleoptera. 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 F. laternaria and F. 

 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, re- 



1 Tour on the Continent, 2d Edit. iii. S5. 



2 Latr. Hist. Nat. x. 262. 



3 Chevrolat in Silbermann's Rev. Entom. i. t. 14. 



VOL. II. 



Z 



