160 NATURAL HISTORY. [CH. x 



earth, but placed themselves under their mother and 

 between her legs, she remaining quite quiet, and 

 suffering them to continue there sometimes for an 

 hour or two together. For their nourishment he 

 placed in the box a piece of very ripe apple, which 

 the old one instantly seized on and began to eat with 

 avidity ; the young ones, too, seemed to eat a little, 

 but with much less relish. On the eighth of June 

 he observed that the young earwigs had changed 

 their skins ; and though this moulting had effected 

 no material difference in their appearance, yet by it 

 they were evidently brought nearer to the state of 

 a perfect insect. 



At another time, about the beginning of April, 

 says the same observer, I found a female earwig 

 under some stones, placed over a heap of eggs, of 

 which she took all the care imaginable, without ever 

 quitting them. Degeer took both the insect and the 

 eggs, and put them into a box filled with earth. As 

 he had scattered the eggs about, the parent insect 

 set about gathering them together. She seized 

 them one by one in her jaws, removed them care- 

 fully to the surface of the box, and in a few days 

 formed a little heap, on which he found her sitting 

 and brooding like a hen over her chickens. The 

 young burst their shells in the middle of May. 

 Their colour was at first white. Degeer fed them 

 with apple for some time, and saw them change 

 their skins more than once. The mother at last 

 died, when her young nearly devoured her carcass, 

 impelled, as Degeer supposes, to so unnatural a 

 deed by hunger and the want of proper food. One 

 only survived on the 23d of July. In their larva 

 state they differ very little from the perfect insect 

 in outward appearance, with the exception of want- 

 ing wings and wing-cases. The wings are folded 

 up with wonderful neatness in the wing-cases, 

 though the former are nine or ten times larger 

 than the envelope which contains them. The wings 



