From the above it is evident that the glow-worm’s fires are anything but “uneffectual” from the point of view of the insect, but Shakespeare was no doubt thinking of something very different—their paling, namely, before the light of dawn. According to Gilbert White, however, they should have been out long ago—the glow-worm being too wise to afford opportunities of comparison in this respect. Thus subtly does the naturalist of Selborne impugn the accuracy of the Bard of Avon: “By observing,” he says, “two glow-worms which were brought from the field to the bank in the garden, it appeared to us that these little creatures put out their lamps between eleven and twelve, and shine no more for the rest of the night.”[149] The intention here, though cleverly disguised, is not sufficiently so to escape detection. It was possibly seen through by the late Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, who in one of the million or so notes to their edition of Shakespeare, say, without distinct reference to the passage in question:—“_Uneffectual._ There is double signification included in this word; it means the glow-worm’s light, which shines without giving heat, and which no longer shows when morning appears.”[150] Thus whilst not committing themselves to White’s opinion they provide a safe refuge for their author, in case it should prove in time to be correct; according to the sound principle contained in a Russian proverb which says, “Had he known where he was going to fall, he would have laid down straw.” In tropical countries fire-flies take the place of glow-worms with us, and though the light which these give out is not so soft and poetic as the lovely green or golden green one of the latter, yet it is more effectively beautiful, owing to the way in which it wanders through the night, appearing and disappearing in successive brilliant flashes. For here the beetle that carries the lamp is a flier, and flashes it about at pleasure through the air, having the power, it would seem, either of showing or concealing its light. The effect of a number of these points of brilliancy, gleaming out, now here, now there, on the soft night air of the tropics, is inexpressibly beautiful, as though, in a smaller firmament, innumerable miniature stars had ceaseless birth and death.