Glowworms

Abstract

WHILE watching, last evening, some glowworms in a mossy stone wall, my attention was attracted to a firefly flying to and fro in the field beyond and approaching the wall where I stood. Arriving within two or three feet of the glowworm I was watching, he made several sharp zigzag flights, drawing nearer the light of the glowworm, and then, making a dash like that of a hawk at an object it has been watching, pitched directly on the glowworm, covering it in the fraction of a second. I had been noting the curious habit of this, which thus appeared to be the female insect, of standing with its abdomen erected in the air and quite motionless, except for a sort of pulsation, but on the contact of the male, the body fell to a normal position, and it was evident that coïtus was taking place. I watched them ten minutes until I was completely satisfied that this was the care, when I swept them both into a card box which I send with this for examination by a competent entomologist of the insects, which have not the slightest likeness to each other, the female resembling in general form the glowworm of England, but having an intenser light, and the light-emitting organs, beside the abdominal, which is the most luminous as well as the largest, being two glands (apparently) situated where the joints of wings might be expected if the insect were winged. The light is of an exquisite green, and so brilliant as to pale little at the proximity of a wax taper burning at six inches' distance.