Fireflies

Fireflies should have a more poetic name. I often wonder what is the physiological explanation of the luminosity of the lightning-bug or the glowworm, that intermittent, palpitant lamp that seems miraculous yet is a myriad nightly spectacle. There is no spectacle more beautiful than a dark lawn on a Southern night, when countless fireflies are showing their dartling golden beams, like little living stars that lose their way and waver in a futile search for it. ~Dorothy Scarborough, "Entomology on a Country Porch," From a Southern Porch, 1919