thout even shaking him on his slight
line of adhesion.

Under these conditions of equilibrium, the operator's short, clumsy
legs are obviously not enough; a special accessory apparatus is needed
to defy the danger of slipping and to seize the unseizable. And this
apparatus the Lampyris possesses. At the hinder end of the animal we
see a white spot which the lens separates into some dozen short, fleshy
appendages, sometimes gathered into a cluster, sometimes spread into a
rosette. There is your organ of adhesion and locomotion. If he would
fix himself somewhere, even on a very smooth surface, such as a
grass-stalk, the Glow-worm opens his rosette and spreads it wide on the
support, to which it adheres by its own stickiness. The same organ,
rising and falling, opening and closing, does much to assist the act of
progression. In short, the Glow-worm is a new sort of self-propelled
cripple, who decks his hind-quarters with a dainty white rose, a kind
of hand with twelve fingers, not jointed, but moving in every
direction: tubular fingers which do not seize, but stick.

The same organ serves another purpose: that of a toilet-sponge and
brush. At a moment of rest, after a meal, the Glow-worm passes and
repasses the said brush over his head, back, sides and hinder parts, a
performance made possible by the flexibility of his spine. This is done
point by point, from one end of the body to the other, with a
scrupulous persistency that proves the great interest which he takes in
the operation. What is his object in thus sponging himself, in dusting
and polishing himself so carefully? It is a question, apparently, of
removing a few atoms of dust or else some traces of viscidity that
remain from the evil contact with the Snail. A wash and brush-up is not
superfluous when one leaves the tub in which the Mollusc has been
treated.

If the Glow-worm possessed no other talent than that of chloroforming
his prey by means of a few tweaks resembling kisses, he would be
unknown to the vulgar herd; but he also knows how to light himself like
a beacon; he shines, which is an excellent manner of achieving fame.
Let us consider more particularly the female, who, while retaining her
larval shape, becomes marriageable and glows at her best during the
hottest part of summer. The lighting-apparatus occupies the last three
segments of the abdomen. On each of the first two it takes the form, on
the ventral surface, of a wide belt covering almost t