170 



OUR HOUSEHOLD INSECTS 



elytra.'* Some of the larger species of this group 

 (Fig. 53) are about the size of earwigs, and in conse- 

 quence of their elongate form and 

 short elytra, are very generally mis- 

 taken for them, the resemblance being 

 sometimes heightened by the presence 

 of short, pointed, projecting organs at 

 the end of the body in the position of 

 the true earwig's forceps. But the 

 resemblance is after all only a super- 

 ficial one. No true projecting forceps 

 are ever developed in the rove-beetles ; 

 their wings are differently veined and 

 differently folded from those of ear- 

 wigs ; and lastly, and most important 

 of all, the life-histories of the two 

 groups are utterly unlike, for the rove- 

 beetles pass into a quiescent chrysalis 

 stage before becoming perfect insects, 

 which is never the case with earwigs. By later systema- 

 tists, the earwigs were removed from the Coleoptera 

 and put into the Orthoptera, amongst the cockroaches, 

 crickets, grasshoppers, and locusts, forming, however, a 

 distinct section of the order. In the nature of their 

 mouth-organs and the style of their metamorphosis they 

 do indeed resemble these insects, yet they are so peculiar 

 in the matter of the wings that their location with the 

 Orthoptera did not satisfy all naturalists ; consequently 

 Kirby, in 1823, removed them and made them into a 

 separate order by themselves, under the name Der- 

 maptera, an unfortunate piece of nomenclature, since 

 this term had previously been adopted as the name of 

 the whole order which is now called Orthoptera. West- 

 wood therefore proposed to replace the name Dermaptera 



FIG. s^.Philonthus 

 ceneus, a Rove- 

 Beetle, sometimes 

 mistaken for an 

 Earwig. Magni- 

 fied three dia- 

 meters. 



