owed the glowworms.

They were just like the glowworms of our own land, for they are fairies
everywhere; worms in the day, and glowworms at night, when their own can
appear, and they can be themselves to others as well as themselves.
But they had their enemies here. For I saw great strong-armed beetles,
hurrying about with most unwieldy haste, awkward as elephant-calves,
looking apparently for glowworms; for the moment a beetle espied one,
through what to it was a forest of grass, or an underwood of moss, it
pounced upon it, and bore it away, in spite of its feeble resistance.
Wondering what their object could be, I watched one of the beetles,
and then I discovered a thing I could not account for. But it is no use
trying to account for things in Fairy Land; and one who travels there
soon learns to forget the very idea of doing so, and takes everything as
it comes; like a child, who, being in a chronic condition of wonder, is
surprised at nothing. What I saw was this. Everywhere, here and there
over the ground, lay little, dark-looking lumps of something more like
earth than anything else, and about the size of a chestnut. The beetles
hunted in couples for these; and having found one, one of them stayed
to watch it, while the other hurried to find a glowworm. By signals, I
presume, between them, the latter soon found his companion again: they
then took the glowworm and held its luminous tail to the dark earthly
pellet; when lo, it shot up into the air like a sky-rocket, seldom,
however, reaching the height of the highest tree. Just like a rocket
too, it burst in the air, and fell in a shower of the most gorgeously
coloured sparks of every variety of hue; golden and red, and purple and
green, and blue and rosy fires crossed and inter-crossed each other,
beneath the shadowy heads, and between the columnar stems of the forest
trees. They never used the same glowworm twice, I observed; but let him
go, apparently uninjured by the use they had made of him.

In other parts, the whole of the immediately surrounding foliage was
illuminated by the interwoven dances in the air of splendidly coloured
fire-flies, which sped hither and thither, turned, twisted, crossed, and
recrossed, entwining every complexity of intervolved motion. Here and
there, whole mighty trees glowed with an emitted phosphorescent light.
You could trace the very course of the great roots in the earth by the
faint light that came through; and every twig, and ev