Restaurant-keepers purchase largely.[1] In the famous Dōtombori of Ōsaka, there is a house where myriads of fireflies are kept in a large space enclosed by mosquito-netting; and customers of this house are permitted to enter the enclosure and capture a certain number of firflies to take home with them.
The wholesale price of living fireflies ranges from three sen per hundred up to thirteen sen per hundred, according to season and quality. Retail dealers sell them in cages; and in Tōkyō the price of a cage of fireflies ranges from three sen up to several dollars. The cheapest kind of cage, containing only three or four fireflies, is scarcely more than two inches square; but the costly cages—veritable marvels of bamboo-work, beautifully decorated—are as large as cages for song-birds. Firefly cages of charming or fantastic shapes—model houses, junks, temple-lanterns, etc.—can be bought at prices ranging from thirty sen up to one dollar.
Dead or alive, fireflies are worth money. They are delicate insects, and they live but a short time in confinement. Great numbers die in the insect-shops; and one celebrated insect-house is said to dispose every season of no less than five shō—that is to say, about one peck[2]—of dead fireflies, which are sold to
註
