With regard to the attitude of the glow-worm when displaying its light, we see how ignorant of the living creature the illustrators of natural history books have been. In scores of works on our shelves, dating from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, the glow-worm is depicted giving out its light while crawling on the ground, and in many illustrations the male is introduced, and is shown flying down to its mate. They drew their figures not from life, but from specimens in a cabinet, only leaving out the {127} pins. But the glow-worm is not perhaps a very well-known creature. A lady in Hampshire recently asked me if it was a species of mole that came out of its run to exhibit its light in the darkness. The insect invariably climbs up, and suspends itself by clinging to, a stem or blade or leaf, and the hinder part of the body curls up until its under surface, the luminous part, is uppermost, thus making the light visible from the air above. In thick hedges I often find the light four or even five feet above the ground. Occasionally a glow-worm will shine from a flat surface, usually a big leaf on to which it has crawled when climbing. Resting horizontally on the leaf, it curls its abdomen up and over its body after the manner of the earwig, until the light is in the right position. When we consider these facts--the way in which the body is curved and twisted about in order (as it seems) to exhibit the light to an insect flying through the air above, and the increase in the light when the sexual excitement is at its greatest--the conclusion seems unavoidable that the light has an important use, namely, to attract the male. Unavoidable, I say, and yet I am not wholly convinced. The fire-flies of diurnal habits may be seen flying about, feeding and pairing, by day; yet when evening comes they fly abroad again, exhibiting their light. What the function of the light is, or of what advantage it is to the insect, we do not know. Again, it has seemed to me that the male of the glow-worm, even when attracted to the female, fears the {128} light. Thus, when the excitement of the shining glow-worm has caused me to look for the male, I have found him, not indeed in but outside of the circle of light, keeping close to its borders, moving about on feet and wings in the dark herbage and on the ground. I know very well that not a few observations made by one person, but many--hundreds if possible--by different observers, are needed before we can say positively that the male glow-worm fears or is repelled by the light. But some of my observations make me think that the male of the glow-worm, like the males of many other species in different orders that fly by night, is drawn to the female by the scent, and that the light is a hindrance instead of a help, although in the end he is drawn into it. We always find it exceedingly hard to believe that anything in nature is without a use; but we need not go very far--not farther than our own