Saturday. Get home at 8.30 A. M.
I find that B. M. Watson sent me from Plymouth, July 20th, six glow-worms, of which two remain, the rest having escaped. He says they were found by his family on the evenings of the 18th and 19th of July. “ They are very scarce, these being the only "ones we have found as yet. They were mostly found on the way from the barn to James’s cottage, under the wild cherry trees on the right hand, in the grass where it was very dry, and at considerable distance from each other. We have had no rain for a month.”
Examining them by night, they are about three quarters of an inch long as they crawl. Looking down on one, it shows two bright dots near together on the head, and, along the body, nine transverse lines of light, succeeded by two more bright dots at the other extremity, wider apart than the first. There is also a bright dot on each side opposite the transverse lines. It is a greenish light, growing more green as the worm is brought into more light. A slumbering, glowing, inward light, as if shining for itself inward as much as outward.
The other worm, which was at first curled up still and emitted a duller light, was one and one twentieth inches in length and also showed two dots of light only on the forward segment. When stretched out, as you look down on them, they have a square-edged look, like a row of buns joined together. Such is the ocular illusion. But whether stretched out or curled up, they look like some kind of rare and precious gem, so regularly marked, far more beautiful than a uniform mass of light would be.
Examining by day, I found the smallest to be seven eighths to one inch long, and the body about one sixth of an inch wide and from one thirteenth to one twelfth of an inch deep, convex above, pointed at head, broader at tail; head about one twentieth of an inch wide. Yet these worms were more nearly linear, or of a uniform breadth (being perhaps broadest at forward extremity), than the Lampyre represented in my French book, which is much the broadest behind and has also two rows of dots down the back. They have six light-brown legs within a quarter of an inch of the forward extremity. The worm is composed of twelve segments or overlap ping scales, like the abdominal plates of a snake, and has a slight elastic projection (?) beneath at tail. It has also six short antennae-like projections from the head, the two outer on each side the longest, the two inner very short.
The general color above was a pale brownish yellow or buff; the head small and dark brown; the antenna: chestnut and white; white or whitish on sides and beneath. You could see a faint dorsal line. They were so transparent that you could see the internal motions when looking down on them.
I kept them in a sod, supplying a fresh one each day. They were invariably found underneath it by day, next the floor, still and curled up in a ring, with the head within or covered by the tail. Were apt to be restless on being exposed to the light. One that got away in the yard was found again ten feet off and down cellar.
What kind are these?
In the account of the Glow-worm in Rees’s Cyclopaedia it is said, “The head is small, flat, hard, and black, and sharp towards the mouth; it has short antennae, and six moderately long legs; the body is flat and is composed of twelve rings, whereas the body of the male consists only of five; it is of a dusky color, with a streak of white down the back.”
Knapp, in “Journal of a Naturalist,” speaks of “the luminous caudal spot” of the Lampyris noctiluca."
Speaking with Dr. Reynolds about the phosphorescence which I saw in Maine, etc., etc., he said that he had seen the will-o'-the-wisp, a small blue flame, like burning alcohol, a few inches in diameter, over a bog, which moved when the bog was shaken.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 8, 1857
Six glow-worms, of which two remain, the rest having escaped . . See June 25, 1852 ("Nature loves variety in all things, and so she adds glow-worms to fireflies. . ."); October 28, 1852 ("The dew in the withered grass reflects the moonlight like glow-worms.")
The phosphorescence which I saw in Maine. See July 24, 1857 (". . . a perfectly regular elliptical ring of light . . . phosphorescent wood, which I had so often heard of, but never chanced to see.")
August 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 8
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau"A book, each page written in its own season,out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021
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