A WORLD OF INSECTS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 23 August 1924, Page 14

A WORLD OF INSECTS.

LIGHT SIGNALS AND WIRELESS MESSAGES. Glow-worms shine on summer nights ivith a varied fire, red as Mars when the clay has been hot and bright, lmt often paling to a blue-green glimmer when the garden banks are fanned by a moist wind. Their light, says The Times, is at all times precise and defined, and burns with a steady flame; and in this, as “well as in its more cheerful colour, the glow-worm excels that other small creeping creature with a nocturnal beam, the sinuous and dusky millipede. Alillipedes gleam on the walls of shady outhouses M’ith a flickering phosplrorenee paler than the greenest flame of the gloM'-worni under the open sky. Neither of these live lamps has much attraction to human eyes, except for its light. Alillipedes have not, as their name implies, a thousand legs, but have so many as to inspire repulsion in creatures with only two. Tlie surge of motion along that dense double fringe of limbs has the horror of the infinite in miniature. Glow-worms, when their light is quenched, have the ugliness of a crawling shape and livid markings. Though beetles, they lack most beetles’ firm outline and burnished mail; they are more like the larvae of beetles than the perfect insect. Only the female shines brightly, and the luminous area is the under-side of the last few segments of her soft tapering body, which she twists so as to display her light more fully. When the light is turned off, the mottled surface M'hich casts it is peculiarly unattractive, so that, when once we have examined a glow-worm n'e may be content with its fairy lustre at a distance. Everyone kriOM’s how moths and flies and beetles are attracted to the light of lamps on summer nights, but it is difficult to account for a habit so little to their advantage. The problem is conjeeturallv illumined by the glow Tworm’s light. This shining beetle is of primitive form; and this fact gives further support to the theory that while insect life was.being moulded to its present shape the pewer of signalling to a mate by light was far more general. It is thought that the instinct of response to light is so deeply implanted in many respects that, though the faculty only survives in a few species, the flame of a lamp lias still an overmastering fascination. An incandescent abdomen is a singular means of communication, effective only within certain limits. Like every visual method of signalling, it requires an uninterrupted field, such as must, often be lacking to small insects passing their lives among the grass and leaves. A method far more inexplicable and subtle has been evolved by certain moths. Take a nWly-hatehed female of certain species of silk-spinners into the woods, and in a minute or tAvo the male moths, if any are present, will be flocking from all quarters, though the lady is shut up in a box. Because Hie male moths which so behave have fern-like antennae of unusual complexity and size, these are thought to be the receivers of the message; but the mystery of its dispatch and transmission. throws the glow-worm’s lamp signal into the shade.