65 
FORFICULA AURICULARIA. 
By H. H. Brinnuey. 
Forficula auricularia (slightly magnified). 
Tue individuals in the photograph reproduced are a female 
and two males, the latter being as regards length of callipers 
“high” and “‘low,” following the terminology of Bateson (Proc. 
Zool. Soc. London, Noy. 15, 1892, p. 585). They were obtained 
in September, 1918, on the uninhabited islet of Rosevear in the 
Scillies, situated about two miles east of the Bishop Rock. This 
islet swarms with earwigs which are mostly large bodied, while 
the ‘‘ high ’’ male is much commoner than the ‘‘low.’”’ Rosevear 
was inhabited from 1850 to 1858 by the workmen employed to 
build the present Bishop Lighthouse. Is it possible that the 
remarkable abundance of earwigs, on an islet whose features are 
mainly masses of granite and a vegetation of sea-pink and giant 
mallow, is related to this human settlement of half a century 
ago? On Round Island, the northernmost islet of the Scilly 
eroup, earwigs are also very numerous and seem to feed chiefly 
on the kitchen refuse thrown ‘‘ over cliff’’ by the light keepers, 
the only human inhabitants. 
The specimen illustrated has callipers 12°25 mm. in length, 
and thus markedly exceeds that taken by Mr. P. M. Bright at 
Freshwater, Isle of Wight, in 1910, and illustrated in the 
‘Entomologist,’ June, 1911, p. 209. In Mr. Bateson’s collection 
of 1892 in the Farn Islands six specimens had callipers 9°0 mm. 
long, and in 1907 and 1908 I obtained four from the same 
locality with callipers 8°75 mm. In a collection made on Round 
Island in 1911 I found thirty-four males with callipers 10 mm. 
or more, among which the highest had the value 11°0 mm, 
ENTOM.—FEBRUARY, 1914. F 
