18 BRITISH OBTHOPTEIU. 



have been bestowed in reference to this point. In 

 the antennas the number of reddish segments varies 

 considerably and in consequence so does the number 

 of black ones ; occasionally the pale segments are 

 increased to three, or reduced to one. The pronotum 

 is sometimes almost entirely dark. 



DATE.- -In the south of France, where A. aunulipes 

 occurs in a wild state, it is found in the summer and 

 autumn. Living under artificial conditions in this 

 country, no doubt imagines may always be found ; 

 probably also breeding is more or less continuous. 



HABITS. After reading the " Entomology of a 

 London Bakehouse ' in the April number of the 

 <Ent. Mo. Mag.' in 1894, H. Swale visited the 

 oldest bakehouse in Tavistock to search for insects. 

 Amongst the ashes under the furnace were great 

 numbers of an earwig, unlike any he had previously 

 seen. Several were taken home, and Saunders, to 

 whom a specimen was submitted, referred it to Aniso- 

 labis annulipes, Lucas,- -a species not before recorded 

 for Britain. The bakers said they had always seen 

 them there, so they must have arrived some years 

 before. Whence did they come?* On 27 Oct. 1896 

 Swale sent me two specimens, and said that they 

 had their nests in the crevices of the pillars which 

 support the oven and in the floor. He stated that it 

 was a very difficult hunting-ground and that a collector 

 was not particularly welcomed by the baker. Writing 

 to Burr in November of the same year Swale said 

 that they were less numerous than they had been, 

 and that he was going to leave them to propagate a 

 little. C. W. Bracken told me (in Hit. 1913) that 

 the bakehouse was pulled down ; so presumably the 



* Swale made out that they were first observed about 1885. In 1916 

 Bracken solved the "mystery" (as Burr called it) of the occurrence of 

 A. annulipes in Tavistock. It appears that some years before 1894, when 

 Swale first found the earwigs, the father-in-law of the occupant of the 

 bakehouse was a Jamaica merchant, who, visiting his daughter, brought the 

 insects in his luggage. They formed a colony in the bakehouse just behind 

 the house. 



