AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



The Earwigs form a compact, homogeneous and well-defined 

 group of insects. Owing to a superficial resemblance to 

 certain Staphylinida, Linnaeus included them in the Coleo- 

 ptera, but de Geer placed them in his Order Dermaptera, 

 which corresponded to the Orthoptera of Olivier, in the 

 modern acceptance of the name. Kirby, in 1815, treated 

 them as a distinct Order, restricting to them de Geer's name 

 Dermaptera, which had been superseded by Olivier's word 

 for the larger group. Authors were then divided into two 

 camps, those in favour of considering the earwigs as an 

 Order and those who preferred to regard them as a Family 

 of the Orthoptera. 



The actual name employed for the group of earwigs has 

 varied still more. Erichson and Fischer called them Labi- 

 duroidcB ; Latreille. Serville, and Scudder, Forficulidce ; 

 Newman and Fischer von Waldheim, Forculina, followed at 

 first by Burmeister, who later proposed Dermaptera in 

 an amended form, Dermatoptera. Westwood invented the 

 appropriate name Euplexoptera, and Fischer, Harmoptera ; 

 Lrunner called them Forficularia, as a family of the Ortho- 

 ptera ; Bolivar regards them as a section of the Orthoptera, 

 under the name Dermaptera, with the single family Forfi- 

 culidce. Dohrn, Redtenbacher, Krauss and Verhoeff follow 

 Kirby, in giving them full ordinal rank, under de Geer's 

 name Dermaptera; but de Bormans, in his monograph 

 published in " Das Tierreich," treats them as a family, 

 Forficulidce. 



Our own inclination is to treat them as a distinct order. 



