At Cumana, the use of the Cucujus is forbidden, as the young Spanish ladies used to carry on a correspondence at night with their lovers by means of the light derived from them.
Captain Stedman tells us, that one of his sentinels, one night, called out that he saw a negro, with a lighted tobacco-pipe, cross a creek near by in a canoe. At which alarm they lost no time in leaping out of their hammocks, and were not a little mortified when they found the pipe was nothing more than a Fire-fly on the wing.
An individual of this species, brought to Paris in some wood, in the larva or nymph state, there underwent its metamorphosis, and by the light which it emitted, excited the greatest surprise among many of the inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Antoine, to whom such a phenomenon had hitherto been unknown.
When Cortes and Narvaez were at war with one another in Mexico, Bernal Diaz relates "that one night in the midst of darkness numbers of shining Beetles (Elater noctilucus) kept continually flying about, which Narvaez's men mistook for the lighted matches of our fire-arms, and this gave them a vast idea of the number of our matchlocks." Thomas Campanius tells us that one night the Cucuji frightened all the soldiers at Fort Christina, in New Sweden (Pennsylvania?): they thought they were enemies advancing toward them with lighted torches. Another such like story, which is not incredible by any means, is told us by Moufet. He says that when Sir Thomas Cavendish and Sir Robert Dudley first landed in the West Indies, and saw an infinite number of moving lights in the woods, which were merely these Elaters, they supposed that the Spaniards were advancing upon them with lighted matches, and immediately betook themselves to their ships.
The Indians of the Caribbee Islands, Ogilby remarks, "anoint their bodies all over (at certain solemnities wherein candles are forbidden) with the juice squeezed out of them (Cucuji), which causes them to shine like a flame of fire." And in the Spanish Colonies, on certain festival days in the month of June, these insects are collected in great numbers, and tied as decorations all over the garments of the young people, who gallop through the streets on horses similarly ornamented, producing on a dark evening the effect of a large moving body of light. On such occasions the lover displays his gallantry by decking his mistress with these living gems.
At the present day, the poorer classes of Cuba and the other West India Islands, make use of these luminous insects for lights in their houses. Twenty or thirty of them put into a small wicker-work cage, and dampened a little with water, will produce quite a brilliant light. Throughout these islands, the Cucujus is worn by the ladies as a most fashionable ornament. As many as fifty or a hundred are sometimes worn on a single ball-room dress. Capt. Stuart tells me he once saw one of these insects upon a lady's white collar, which at a little distance rivaled the Kohinoor in splendor and beauty. The insect is fastened to the dress by a pin through its body, and only worn so long as it lives, for it loses its light when dead.
The statement of Humboldt is, that at the present day in the habitations of the poorer classes of Cuba, a dozen of Cucuji placed in a perforated gourd suffice for a light during the night. By shaking the gourd quickly, the insect is roused, and lights up its luminous disks. The inhabitants employ a truthful and simple expression, in saying that a gourd filled with Cucuji is an ever-lighted torch; and in fact it is only extinguished by the death of the insects, which are easily kept alive with a little sugar cane. A lady in Trinidad told this great traveler, that during a long and painful passage from Costa Firme, she had availed herself of these phosphorescent insects whenever she wished to give the breast to her child at night. The captain of the ship would not permit any other light on board at night, for fear of the privateers.
Southey has happily introduced the Cucujus in his "Madoc" as furnishing the lamp by which Coatel rescued the British hero from the hands of the Mexican priests:
She beckon'd 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. By that light did Madoc first Behold the features of his lovely guide.
Darwin says: "In Jamaica, at some seasons of the year, the Fire-flies are seen in the evening in great abundance. When they settle on the ground, the bull-frog greedily devours them, which seems to have given origin to a curious, though very cruel, method of destroying these animals: if red-hot pieces of charcoal be thrown toward them in the dusk of the evening, they leap at them, and hastily swallow them, mistaking them for Fire-flies, and are burnt to death."
Beetles belonging to the family Elateridae have been so called from a peculiar power they have of leaping up like a tumbler when placed on their backs, and for this reason they have received the English appellations of Spring-beetles and Skip-jacks, and from the noise which the operation makes when they leap, they are also called Snap, Watch, or Click-beetle, and likewise Blacksmiths.
If a Blacksmith beetle enters your house, a quarrel will ensue which may end in blows. This superstition obtains in Maryland.
Lampyridae. — Glow-worms.
Antonius Thylesius Bonsentinus, following his elegant description of the Glow-worm, gives a pretty fable of its origin. As translated in Moufet's Theater of Insects, his words are these:
This little fly shines in the air alone, Like sparks of fire, which when it was unknown To me a boy, I stood then in great fear, Durst not attempt to touch it, or come near. May be this worm from shining in the night, Borrowed its name, shining like candle bright. The cause is one, but divers are the names, It shines or not, according as she frames Herself to fly or stand; when she doth fly, You would believe 'twere sparkles in the skie, At a great distance you shall ever finde Prepar'd with light and lanthorn all this kinde. Darkness cannot conceal her, round about Her candle shines, no winds can blow it out. Sometimes she flies as though she did desire Those that pass by to observe her fire: Which being nearer, seem to be as great, As sparks that fly when smiths hot iron beat. When Pluto ravish'd Proserpine, that rape, For she was waiting on her, changed her shape, And since that time, she flyeth in the night Seeking her out with torch and candle light.
The following anecdote is related by Sir J. E. Smith, of the effect of the first sight of the Italian Glow-worms upon some Moorish ladies ignorant of such appearances. These females had been taken prisoners at sea, and, until they could be ransomed, lived in a house in the outskirts of Genoa, where they were frequently visited by the respectable inhabitants of the city; a party of whom, on going one evening, were surprised to find the house closely shut up, and their Moorish friends in the greatest consternation. On inquiring into the cause, they found that some Glow-worms — Pygoalampis Italica — had found their way into the building, 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 curious idea it was some time before they could be divested. — The common people of 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.
Cardan, Albertus, Gaudentinus, Mizalduo, and many others have asserted that perpetual lights can be produced from the Glow-worm; and that waters distilled from this insect afford a lustre in the night. It is needless to say these assertions are without foundation.
In India, the ladies have recourse to Fire-flies for ornaments for their hair, when they take their evening walks. They inclose them in nets of gauze. And the beaux of Italy, Sir J. E. Smith tells us, are accustomed in the summer evenings to adorn the heads of the ladies with Glow-worms, by sticking them also in their hair.
Never kill a Glow-worm, if you do, the country people say, you will put "the light out of your house," i.e. happiness, prosperity, or whatever blessing you may be enjoying.
A Glow-worm, in your path, denotes brilliant success in all your undertakings. If one enters a house, one of the heads of the family will shortly die. These superstitions obtain in Maryland.
Of the Glow-worm — Noctiluca terrestris, Col. Ecphr., i. 38 — Dr. James says: "The whole insect is used in medicine, and recommended by some against the Stone. Cardan ascribes an anodyne virtue to it."
Mr. Ray, in his travels through the State of Venice, says; "A discovery made by a certain gentleman, and communicated to me by Francis Jessop, Esq., is, that those reputed meteors, called in Latin Ignis fatui, and known in England by the conceited names of Jack with a Lanthorn, and Will with a Wisp, are nothing else but swarms of these flying Glow-worms. Which, if true, we may give an easy account of those phenomena of these supposed fires, viz., their sudden motion from place to place, and leading travelers that follow them into bogs and precipices." It has been suggested also that the mole-cricket, Gryllotalpa vulgaris, which in its nocturnal peregrinations was supposed to be luminous, is this notorious "Will-o'-the-wisp."
Pliny says: "When Glow-worms appear, it is a common sign of the ripenesse of barley, and of sowing millet and pannick." And Mantuan sang to the same tune:
Then is the time your barley for to mow, When Glow-worms with bright wings themselves do show.
Ptinidae — Death-watch, etc.
The common name of Death-watch, given to the Anobium tessellatum, sufficiently announces the popular prejudice against this insect; and so great is this prejudice, that, as says an editor of Cuvier's works, the fate of many a nervous and superstitious patient has been accelerated by listening, in the silence and solitude of night, to this imagined knell of his approaching dissolution. The learned Sir Thomas Browne considered the superstition connected with the Death-watch of great importance, and remarks that "the man who could eradicate this error from the minds of the people would save from many a cold sweat the meticulous heads of nurses and grandmothers," for such persons are firm in the belief, that
The solemn Death-watch clicks the hour of death.
The witty Dean of St. Patrick endeavored to perform this useful task by means of ridicule. And his description, suggested, it would appear, by the old song of "A cobbler there was, and he lived in a stall," runs thus:
A wood worm That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form, With teeth or with claws, it will bite, it will scratch And chambermaids christen this worm a Death-watch; Because, like a watch, it always cries click. Then woe be to those in the house that are sick! For, sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost, If the maggot cries click when it scratches the post. But a kettle of scalding hot water injected, Infallibly cures the timber affected: The omen is broken, the danger is over, The maggot will die, and the sick will recover.