What I saw was this. Everywhere, here and there over the ground,
lay little, dark-looking lumps of something more like earth than
anything else, and about the size of a chestnut. The beetles
hunted in couples for these; and having found one, one of them
stayed to watch it, while the other hurried to find a glowworm.
By signals, I presume, between them, the latter soon found his
companion again: they then took the glowworm and held its
luminous tail to the dark earthly pellet; when lo, it shot up
into the air like a sky-rocket, seldom, however, reaching the
height of the highest tree. Just like a rocket too, it burst in
the air, and fell in a shower of the most gorgeously coloured
sparks of every variety of hue; golden and red, and purple and
green, and blue and rosy fires crossed and inter-crossed each
other, beneath the shadowy heads, and between the columnar stems
of the forest trees. They never used the same glowworm twice, I
observed; but let him go, apparently uninjured by the use they
had made of him.
In other parts, the whole of the immediately surrounding foliage
was illuminated by the interwoven dances in the air of splendidly
coloured fire-flies, which sped hither and thither, turned,
twisted, crossed, and recrossed, entwining every complexity of
intervolved motion. Here and there, whole mighty trees glowed
with an emitted phosphorescent light.
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