Observations on the habits and natural surroundings of insects made during the 'Skeat expedition' to the Malay peninsula, 1899-1900 / by Nelson Annandale.

Nelson Annandale

Date:: 1900

Credit: Observations on the habits and natural surroundings of insects made during the 'Skeat expedition' to the Malay peninsula, 1899-1900 / by Nelson Annandale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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$possessed by some peculiar 8outh-American beetles \ of showing lights of different colours on different parts of the body at the same time is not more wonderful, or more conspicuous, than this. The phenomenon is not common on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula, where the soil is sandy; but it is said to be often manifested both in Siam proper and among the mangrove-swamps of Perak and Selangor in the west. I have only been able to see it on one occasion, and that was on the bank of the river near Kuala Patani, one fine evening at the end of June. A large tree was covered with many hundreds of fire-flies, the majority of which seemed, judging from the similarity of their lights, to belong to one species, or perhaps to one sex. There were three individuals seated together, however, whose lights were larger and bluer than those of the others. The lights of all the specimens of the more abundant variety flickered in unison with one another ; those of the minority, the three individuals, flickered together also, but in a different time. At one instant the tree was all lighted up as if by hundreds of little electric lamps ; at the next it was in complete darkness, except for three blue points. Then, again, it was covered with white points, except for a little patch of darkness where the three blue lights had been, and would be again immediately. A similar power of displaying luminosity in unison is said to be exhibited by some marine animals, even after they have been removed from the water ; but the questions as to how this unison is effected and what is its exact object are obscure. The power by which it is regulated may be somewhat analogous to that which causes all the individuals composing a flock of birds to wheel at the same instant. As Professor Poulton has pointed out to me, the rhythmical display of light among a crowd of individuals appears much more conspicuous to the eye than the simple flickering of a number of independent points. Malay Names.—The ordinary Malay term for a fire-fly is Iclip- Mip, a name which seems to suggest the rapid flickering of the insect’s light, though the word Jclip is used in the sense of to glitter. Our west-coast servants called the luminous beetle larvae with which we met in Patalung, “ Mip-klip tanah’’’ land or earth fire-flies. The aquatic species, which they had never seen or heard of before, they christened “ klip-Jclip ayer^'’ or water fire-fly. His Excellency Phya Sukum, the Siamese Chief Commissioner for the Ligor Circle, to whose hospitality and administration we owed much, tells me that he has seen, in the south of Ligor and near Singora, a large green worm which sits on trees, and it is so brilliantly luminous at night that it well deserves its Siamese name of Lightning Grub. On one occasion he secured a specimen, and was conveying it to Bangkok ; but unfortunately it was killed on the voyage through the carelessness of a servant who closed the box in which it was. [29] See Haase, Deutsche eut. Zeitschr. 1888, pp. 146-167.$