44 I. \.\III.V I. I-'ORFKTLIDJ-:. THE KAKNVKiS. 



form of lancets, separated l>y as many grooves. This gi//ard opens 

 b\ a valve into the stomach proper. Attached to the floor of the 

 stomach are numerous hepatic vessels, each with a beak-like ter- 

 mination, a circumstance which removes these insects from the 

 Coleoptera, where they were placed by Linmeus, and approximates 

 them to the oilier ( )rthoptera. The stomach opens into a small 

 intestine, which is followed by a csecum and a rectum." 



The name "earwig" was given to these insects in Europe, 

 where they are abundant and better known than in this country. 

 There it is a common belief among peasants and the uneducated 

 masses that they will, when opportunity offers, enter the ears of 

 human beings and injure the sense of hearing. Such belief is, of 

 course, nonsensical, the insect being wholly harmless. Howard 

 (1902, 340) states that an early advocate of the doctrine of si m ilia 

 s'uniUbuft citnmtitr'* prescribed earwigs, dried, pulverized and 

 mixed with the urine of a hare, as a remedy for deafness. 



Like the members of the family Blattida\ the flat body enables 

 earwigs to live in cracks and crannies in walls and floors, beneath 

 rubbish and the barks of logs and stumps, or between the bases 

 of the leaves and the steins of rushes and grasses. From these 

 retreats they come forth only by night, some to feed upon dead 

 insects, small snails and other sluggish moving forms, while 

 others live chiefly upon decaying vegetable matter, but often do 

 much damage by eating ripe fruit, tender shoots and corollas of 

 flowers, etc. 1 " They seem to prefer damp situations, and the ma- 

 jority of species occur mainly among reeds and beneath debris 

 near the borders of lakes, rivers or the sea. Latreille 11 says: 

 "These insects are very common in cool and damp places, fre- 

 quently collect in troops under stones and the bark of trees, are 

 very injurious to our cultivated fruits, devour even their dead con- 

 geners, and defend themselves with their pincers, which frequent- 

 ly vary in form, according to sex." Like other nocturnal insects 

 they are attracted by liyht, and on the ground beneath the (dec-- 

 trie lights of cities in Florida and Old .Mexico, the writer has 

 found one or two of them in numbers. 



The female earwig is said to brood over the eggs, but to aban- 

 don the young soon after they are hatched. Tn this she resembles 

 some of our comn;on myriapods of the genus [JtJioltiu*. which are 

 often found beneath logs and rubbish curled up around their eggs. 



"Like things are cured liy like tilings. "'See und-T Foi ,'icula anriciilai'ii:. ] . 5 - ; . 



11 In Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, 1831, IV, 5. 



