no 
CONTENT. 
would display very little light the next evening, even 
under the excitement of being handled, and on the 
following night would be irrecoverably dark ; this may 
have resulted from the lack of food or of exercise, not 
I think from the lack of air or of moisture. 
Peter Martyr asserts that the natives of Hispa- 
niola, at the time of the discovery, were in the habit 
of tying one of these Glow-flies to each of their great 
toes, when they journeyed by night through the 
woods ; a thing not at all improbable. The two 
insects would throw a considerable light around the 
traveller’s steps ; and if they should withhold their 
luminosity, might easily be replaced by others freshly 
caught. On this custom Southey, in the beautiful 
Poem already quoted, has founded a pretty inci- 
dent. When Coatel was guiding Madoc through the 
cavern, — 
“ She beckoned, and descended, and drew out 
From underneath her vest, a cage, or net 
It rather might be called, so fine the twigs 
Which knit it, where, confined, two fire-flies gave 
Their lustre.” Madoc, ii. xvii. 
Of the earlier stages of any of these light-bearing 
insects I have been able to procure little information. 
About the middle of May a larva of an Elateridous 
beetle was brought to me which was luminous ; in 
the dark the whole insect was pellucid, but the divi- 
sions of the segments showed distinct light, blue and 
pale, not very vivid. It was impatient of being 
handled, and bit fiercely at the hand, but inef- 
fectually. I suspect that it was the larva of the 
Glow-fly; the specimen is now in the British Mu- 
