A BEAUTIFUL CHARACTER 273 



a courage equal to that of the barn-door fowl. 

 When the young are hatched she tends them and 

 leads them in the way earwigs should go. 



Now this is surely a point of contact for the 

 sympathetic and all who like to encourage virtue, 

 and one fitted to, dimmish prejudice. Other 

 positive virtues will almost certainly reveal them- 

 selves to research, for it is impossible to believe 

 that the good mother is good in no other respect. 

 At present, the earwig's other virtues remain un- 

 catalogued. It feeds robins, but it doesn't do 

 it willingly ; and centipedes which have not yet 

 revealed a single good quality do as much. But 

 if the catalogue of merits is short it may be said 

 that the earwig's demerits are in the main mythical. 



The first is its plainness, and many people who 

 would not themselves do much in a beauty com- 

 petition would crush it for its appearance. But 

 it must be confessed an animal is just as ugly 

 as it looks, and the earwig is deficient both in 

 line and colour. The second demerit is that it 

 enters people's ears, but how this story originated 

 is one of the mysteries. There is absolutely not 

 one authenticated case of the slandered insect 

 having invaded the human ear. If an earwig were 

 to fin^ itself on the side of a human face, disliking 

 bright light as it does, it would make for the 

 nearest cover, and it might enter the aperture of 

 the ear, which from its point of view would seem 

 to be a kind of cavern. But earwigs do not get 

 upon people's faces, and their strongest instinct 

 is to keep out of the way. 



So completely has the search for evidence of 

 18 



