Marie Cloninger, age ll, of Boise, Idaho, for her question:
Why can we never find any fireflies?
To catch a firefly, you must be in the right place at the right time. When you see him you can catch him with no trouble at all, but the important thing is to locate him. From Boise you would have to take a long journey to the southeast or due east beyond the mountains and prairies.
The white winged cabbage butterfly immigrated to America in l860 and 20 years later its descendants had traveled westward as far as the Rockies. In a few more years this pesky devourer of our crops had spread all over our country. Insects spread out generation after generation in search of food and some of them invade vast areas of new territory in a few years. Others remain in limited areas, perhaps because there they find shelter, moisture or other living conditions that happen to be necessary.
The fairy fireflies live only in limited areas of our land and never spread over the Rockies to Boise, Idaho. Few if any, of them live in the central states west of the Mississippi, in the western mountains or in California. However, we find than. in abundance east of the Mississippi all the way to the sea and south of the Great Lakes all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. In this wide stretch of territory an insect collector could find 50 different species of the firefly.
Easterners and Southerners axe used to summer evenings adorned with flocks of flashing fireflies. The balmy air is aglow with frisky sparks as the fairy lights switch on and off. Fireflies are classed as beetles and their light producing organs are in the tail sections of their abdomens. Their light giving talent is called luminescence, and in some species the eggs, caterpillars and adult winged insects all have this shining gift of luminescence.
In some species, the females are wingless and only the adult males take to the air. The grounded females are known as glowworms and they too have the gift of luminescence. In New england and the Carolinas there is winking and blinking between the fireflies in the air and the glowworms in the grass. some firefly caterpillars live out of sight in the soil, Others live in crumbling logs or among last year's fallen leaves. The drab brown grubs are meat eaters that feed on the eggs and larvae of other insects. They also dine on mites and many small bugs and beetles that dwell in the dirt.
Scientists are very interested in the lumiriescerice of the firefly and his shining kinfolk. He sheds a cold light without heat, a quality we are unable to copy in our man made lighting systems. Candles and flash lights, gas flames and electric bulbs all give, off heat as well as light. We do not need this heat and it wastes fuel. someday. science will find a practical way to copy the firefly and our illuminating systems will produce cold light. This will be more economical and what's more We will be able to change burned out bulbs without burning our fingers.