The flesh-fly laying its eggs on the carrion-flower is only a striking
instance of the mistakes all instincts are liable to, never more
markedly than in the inherited tendency to fits of frenzied excitement:
the feeling is frequently excited by the wrong object, and explodes at
inopportune moments.




CHAPTER XIII.

NATURE'S NIGHT LIGHTS.

_(Remarks about Fireflies and other matters.)_


It was formerly supposed that the light of the firefly (in any family
possessing the luminous power) was a safeguard against the attacks of
other insects, rapacious and nocturnal in their habits. This was Kirby
and Spence's notion, but it might just as well be Pliny's for all the
attention it would receive from modern entomologists: just at present
any observer who lived in the pre-Darwin days is regarded as one of the
ancients. The reasons given for the notion or theory in the celebrated
_Introduction to Entomology_ were not conclusive; nevertheless it was
not an improbable supposition of the authors'; while the theory which
has taken its place in recent zoological writings seems in every way
even less satisfactory.

Let us first examine the antiquated theory, as it must now be called. By