COMMON EARWIG. 83 



from which this order takes its name of Euplexoptera, or 

 " tightly folded wings." At figures 1 and 3, p. 80,* the great 

 size of the delicate membranous fan-shaped wing when ex- 

 panded, as comj^ared with that of its little scale-like cover, is 

 given much magnified. The abdomen is mostly dark red or 

 rusty black ; legs very pale. The length is from about half 

 an inch to upwards of three-quarters ; and though by very 

 far most numerous in summer and autumn, these Earwigs 

 may be found during the whole of the year. 



Their feeding-time is at night, and they shelter themselves 

 from light by day. This may be under stones, or tiles, or 

 bits of wood, or rough slabs or pieces of timber, or amongst 

 withered leaves, or in badly pointed or ruinous walls. They 

 are also to be found in great numbers in such shelter as is 

 afforded them on their food-plants, as amongst the petals of 

 Dahlias and Carnations, in the dried and curled leaves of 

 Hops, or of Apple trees, or on wall fruit-trees, squeezed in 

 between the nectarine or other fruit that they may have been 

 ravaging and the wall, or, again, sheltering beneath fallen 

 and half-decayed fruit on the ground. It is impossible to 

 enumerate the variety of their hiding-places out of doors, 

 from the broadscale shelter of a haystack to the chinks in 

 a hop-pole; and indoors, in bad Earwig years, beds, boots, 

 pastry, bread, anything which affords dark shelter, especially 

 if it unites the convenience of food with it, may serve as a 

 hiding-place. 



Prevention and Eemedies. — So far as attacks to growing 

 fruit are concerned it seems almost impossible to use any 

 remedial measures, for jarring the branches when the fruit is 

 in the ripe state, in which the Earwigs prefer it, would bring 

 it down. 



The only available measures seem — (1) taking care, so far 

 as may be, that there are no available breeding-places or 

 shelters ; and (2) such broadscale trapping, as by lessening 

 the aggregate number of the pests will lessen proportion of 

 infestation to the fruit. 



For the first, in gardens where Earwig attack is a regularly 

 recurring yearly trouble, much might be done to lessen it, by 

 disturbance of neglected surface-soils, keeping walls in such 

 order as to afford no shelter, and even in orchards also some- 

 thing might be done by clearing the various kinds of rubbish, 

 as wood, stones, clods of hard earth, &c., beneath which they 

 hide. If the shelters are removed, the Earwigs will in 

 ordinary cases be very much reduced in numbers, and as it is 



* The expanded wing, figure 3, is from p. 151 of 'Our Household Insects,' 

 by Edw. A. Butler. (Longmans, Green & Co.) 



G 2 



