Such was the work, such was the noble devotion and the worthy career of Sybille de Mérian. Let women, let young girls, who are martyrs to the ennui of a life devoid of occupation, peruse her beautiful books, and learn from it how much a woman may do with the time which is now either utterly unoccupied or only devoted to useless employments. To study Nature in any of its phases ought, it seems to us, to give more satisfaction to the soul, more strength to the mind, and cause more admiration of and gratitude to the supreme Author of Nature than doing a little embroidery. It is, as we have already said, in the work of Sybille de Mérian, "Métamorphoses des Insectes de Surinam," that one finds mentioned, for the first time, the luminous properties of the _Fulgora lanternaria_. The author thus relates her observations, which were the result of chance:-- "Some Indians having one day brought me a great number of the Lantern Flies, I shut them up in a large box, not knowing then that they gave light at night. Hearing a noise, I sprang out of bed and had a candle brought. I very soon discovered that the noise proceeded from the box, which I hurriedly opened; but, alarmed at seeing emerging from it a flame, or, to speak more correctly, as many flames as there were insects, I at first let it fall. Having recovered from my astonishment, or rather from my fright, I caught all my insects again, and admired this singular property of theirs." Since the time when Mlle. de Mérian visited Guyana, different travellers have said that they could not observe, as she did, this phosphorescent phenomenon. It is, then, probable that this property only exists in the male or female insect, and then only at certain seasons. What a marvellous spectacle must the rich valleys of Guyana present, when, in the stillness of the night, the air is filled with living torches; when, the _Fulgoræ_ flying about in space, the flashes of fire cross each other, go out and blaze up again, shine brightly and then die out, and present, on a calm evening, the appearance of those lightning flashes which are usually seen only in the midst of a tempest!