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.[170] Southy 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.”(!)[171] Beetles belonging to the family _Elateridæ_ 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.