
COLEOPTERA. 505 
| them, which proves that the light which these insects diffuse is 
| to attract.2 Once in the hands of the women, the Cucuyos are 
‘shut up in little cages of very fine wire, and fed on fragments of 
sugar-cane. When the Mexican ladies wish to adorn themselves 
with these living diamonds, they place them in little bags of light 
tulle, which they arrange with taste on their skirts. There is 
another way of mounting the Cucuyos. They passa pin, with- 
out hurting them, under the thorax, and stick this pin in their 
hair. The refinement of elegance consists in combining with the 
Cucuyos, humming-birds and real diamonds, which produce a 
dazzling head-dress. Sometimes, imprisoning these animated 
flames in gauze, the graceful Mexican women twist them into 
ardent necklaces, or else roll them round their waists, like a fiery 
girdle. They go to the ball under a diadem of living topazes, of 
animated emeralds, and this diadem blazes or pales according as 
the insect is fresh or fatigued. When they return home, after 
the soirée, they make them take a bath, which refreshes them, 
and put them back again into the cage, which sheds during 
the whole night a soft light in the chamber. In 1766, a 
Cucuyo, brought alive from America to Paris, probably in some 
old piece of wood which happened to be on the vessel, caused 
great terror to the inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Antoine, 
when they saw it flying in the evening, glittering in the air. 
In 1864, a number of Cucuyos were brought from Mexico 
to Paris by M. Laurent, captain of the frigate, La Floride. An 
experiment, made in the laboratory of the Ecole Normal, showed 
that the spectrum of their light is continuous, without any 
black rays; it differs, besides, from the spectrum of the solar 
light by a greater intensity of the yellow colour. The light is 
produced probably as it is in the case of the Lampyris, by the 
slow combustion of a substance secreted by the animal. The 
Cucuyo can nevertheless, at will, increase or diminish the splen- 
dour of this light by means of membranes which it superposes, 
like screens, in front of the phosphorescent bumps which it has on 
its forehead. 
In the Indies, and in China, the women use for dressing their 
hair with, or as ear-rings, another Coleopteron of the same tribe, 
which begins even to be employed for this purpose by the women 





































