The Indians of the Carribbee Islands, Ogleby remarks, “anoint their bodies all over (at certain solemnities wherein candles are forbidden) with the juice squeezed out of them
(Cucuji), which causes them to shine like a flame of fire.”[168] And in the Spanish Colonies, on certain festival days in the month of June, these insects are collected in great numbers, and tied as decorations all over the garments of the young people, who gallop through the streets on horses similarly ornamented, producing on a dark evening the effect of a large moving body of light. On such occasions the lover displays his gallantry by decking his mistress with these living gems.[169]
At the present day, the poorer classes of Cuba and the other West India Islands, make use of these luminous insects for lights in their houses. Twenty or thirty of them put into a small wicker-work cage, and dampened a little with water, will produce quite a brilliant light. Throughout these islands, the Cucujus is worn by the ladies as a most fashionable ornament. As many as fifty or a hundred are sometimes worn on a single ball-room dress. Capt. Stuart tells me he once saw one of these insects upon a lady’s white collar, which at a little distance rivaled the Kohinoor in splendor and beauty. The insect is fastened to the dress by a pin through its body, and only worn so long as it lives, for it loses its light when dead.
The statement of Humboldt is, that at the present day in the habitations of the poorer classes of Cuba, a dozen of Cucuji placed in a perforated gourd suffice for a light during the night. By shaking the gourd quickly, the insect is roused, and lights up its luminous disks. The inhabitants employ a truthful and simple expression, in saying that a gourd filled with Cucuji is an ever-lighted torch; and in fact it is only extinguished by the death of the insects, which are easily kept alive with a little sugar cane. A lady in Trinidad told this great traveler, that during a long and painful passage from Costa Firme, she had availed herself of these phosphorescent insects whenever she wished to give the breast to her child at night. The captain of the ship would not permit any other light on board at night, for fear of the privateers.[170]
Southy has happily introduced the Cucujus in his
“Madoc” as furnishing the lamp by which Coatel rescued the British hero from the hands of the Mexican priests:
She beckon’d and descended, and drew out
From underneath her vest a cage, or net
It rather might be called, so fine the twigs
Which knit it, where, confined, two fire-flies gave