Fire-flies

Still reading Mason & Dixon, and I've run hard aground on the following passage:Summer takes hold, manifold sweet odors of the Fields, and presently the Forest, become routine, and one night the Surveyors sit in their Tent, in the Dark, and watch Fire-flies, millions of them blinking ev'rywhere,—Dixon engineering plans for lighting the Camp-site with them...

languagehat.com: ENSIGN CHEER. 2005

Jeremiah will lead the Fire-flies to stream continuously through the Tent in a narrow band, here and there to gather in glass Globes, concentrating their light to the Yellow of a new-risen Moon.

languagehat.com: ENSIGN CHEER. 2005

Fire-flies sparkled everywhere, thickest over the marshy places.

Judith of the Cumberlands Alice MacGowan

"Fire-flies!" gasped Derrick, and began to cough, at first slowly, with pauses for breath, then quickly, spasmodically, convulsively.

Rosa Mundi and Other Stories 1910

Fire-flies -- and the fire they gleam with is so cold that a midge couldn't warm his heart at it, let alone

Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea Langdon Elwyn Mitchell 1898

Fire-flies with bronze-green bodies are crawling about; - I notice also small frogs, large gray crickets, and a species of snail with a black shell.

Two Years in the French West Indies Lafcadio Hearn 1877

I suggested 'Fire-flies,' they at once approved the topic, and wrote for me the story of that Chinese student who, being too poor to pay for a lamp, imprisoned many fireflies in a paper lantern, and thus was able to obtain light enough to study after dark, and to become eventually a great scholar.

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan Second Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

Fire-flies darted about; the croaking of tree-toads could be heard.

Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman Francis Hopkinson Smith 1876

Fire-flies now show their light during mild evenings, and on hot sultry days the shrill rasping song of the male Cicada, for "they all have voiceless wives," cuts the air: The Chinch-bug, that fell destroyer of our wheat crops, appears, according to Harris, in the middle of the month, and "may be seen in their various stages of growth on all kinds of grain, on corn and herds-grass during the whole summer."

Our Common Insects A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, Gardens and Houses 1872

The Fire-flies improved their lights and arranged them more artistically, and the Faeries took their places.

Seven Little People and their Friends Horace Elisha Scudder 1870