[ April, 
211 
taken refuge in the “attaps,”and there been eaten by numerous enemies 
of all orders, from bunting spiders to rats ; there are plenty of bats 
thing about now, and I rarely see above half-a-dozen moths in an 
e\ening. Should any one wish to try this method of collecting, I 
would recommend him to make his clearing some four or five miles 
from any open space. I felled jungle, and made a little bungalow for 
m\ self at a place about half a mile from an old “ campay,” and expected 
to see lots of moths, but the bats found their wa y over at once ; at first 
I had a few moths, eight or ten or so, fly in of an evening, even these were 
usually of the most insignificant looking character (though one, at 
least, was not : I enclose picture of it, which I shall be much obliged 
if the editors will name for me # ), and latterly there were few or none 
at all. 
\\ hen I came out here, the late Mr. Smith was anxious to know 
if 1 could get any information as to the reputed light-producing power 
of the luilgondm. All my evidence is entirely to the negative ; the 
Indians know no light-giving insect but the common fire-fly, and I have 
kept some of the family alive for days, and watched them closely, but 
have never seen the slightest luminosity about them. 
ith regard to the discussion at the Entomological Society on 
the 4th February, 1880, about fire-flies, Sir S. S. Saunders was entirely 
in the right; that the intermittent character of the fire-flies’ light should 
be doubted would be looked upon by the poorest native with much the 
same amusement with which Englishmen hear Frenchmen aver that 
the sun never shines in England. The commonest observer on any of 
the most ordinary lines of travel cannot but notice this: a bush, 
generally some kind of low mangrove, will have thousands of fire-flies 
on it, and the nearest parts of the adjacent bushes, also within a radius 
of ten feet, wull have their hundreds down to scores : their Imht all 
disappears and re-appears as though it was the action of one insect, 
a singular and most striking phenomenon. Mr. McLachlan seemed to 
think that fire-flies flew' together in swarms, and, therefore, suggested 
the theory that a slight current of air altering the position of the 
whole swarm at once, so that their light-producing surface could not 
be seen, accounted for the supposed intermittancy. In the first 
place, I, at all events, have never seen fire-flies swarm when flying • as 
far as my own observations go, they always fly about singly. Secondly, 
place a fire-fly in any position you like, you cannot obscure its light- 
even if you wrapt it up in anything so that the portion of the body 
giving forth the light was even partially obscured, still the light would 
be visible. 
* This drawing was not received.— Eds. 
