166 OUR HOUSEHOLD INSECTS 



it little tugs with a jerk of the head, like a horse pulling 

 hay out of a rack. 



The partiality of earwigs for flowers, and particularly 

 for dahlias, has led to the adoption of various devices in 

 gardens to get rid of them, advantage being taken of 

 their fondness for dark corners. Mouffet, an old writer, 

 speaks of " ox-hoofs, hogs'-hoofs, or old cast things " as 

 being set up in his time on sticks as traps by the country 



FIG. 52. Tropseolum flower, with Earwig in spur. Part of the flower 

 has been removed, to disclose the Earwig. 



women, to whom earwigs, or erriwiggles, as they call 

 them, are exceedingly hateful, as he says, " because of 

 the clove gilliflowers that they eat and spoyl." Crabs' 

 and lobsters' claws have been used with effect in a similar 

 manner. Into the recesses of these the earwigs delight 

 to penetrate in the daytime, just as they have learned to 

 do into the spurs of the tropseolum flowers (Fig. 52), 

 since these were introduced into British gardens. But 

 the creatures are so ubiquitous, so abundant, at least in 



