About the habits of Pyrophorus, the large tropical firefly which has the
seat of its luminosity on the upper surface of the thorax, nothing
definite appears to be known; but it has been said that this instinct is
altogether nocturnal. The Pyrophorus is only found in the sub-tropical
portion of the Argentine country, and I have never met with it. With the
widely-separated Cratomorphus, and the tortoise-shaped Aspisoma, which
emit the light from the abdomen, I am familiar; one species of
Cratomorphus--a long slender insect with yellow wing-cases marked with
two parallel black lines--is "the firefly" known to every one and
excessively abundant in the southern countries of La Plata. This insect
is strictly diurnal in its habits--as much so, in fact, as diurnal
butterflies. They are seen flying about, wooing their mates, and feeding
on composite and umbelliferous flowers at all hours of the day, and are
as active as wasps during the full glare of noon. Birds do not feed on
them, owing to the disagreeable odour, resembling that of phosphorus,
they emit, and probably because they are to be uneatable; but their
insect enemies are not so squeamish, and devour them readily, just as
they also do the blister-fly, which one would imagine a morsel fitted to
disagree with any stomach. One of their enemies is the Monedula wasp;
another, a fly, of the rapacious Asilidas family; and this fly is also a
wasp in appearance, having a purple body and bright red wings, like a
Pepris, and this mimetic resemblance doubtless serves it as a protection
against birds.
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