472 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS, [Dec., ’08 
of intense pain and annoyance until removed. As a matter 
of fact, the ear wig appears to be rather an uncommon insect 
in collections and is seldom seen in nature. The forceps are 
used in arranging the true wings in folding them upon the 
back, the insects being harmless to the last degree. What 
were usually pointed out to me as ear wigs were several kinds 
of centipedes or millipedes. Some of the larger of these centi- 
pedes can and do bite severely when roughly handled. The 
house centipede or skein centipede, a really beneficial creature 
which feeds largely on roaches, should never be grasped with 
the bare hand as it is capable of inflicting a wound. 
We still retain a vivid recollection of an occasion upon 
which there had been a wholesale sacking of bumble bees nests 
and the slain bees strewed the ground in considerable numbers. 
Upon picking up one of the dead bees for a good look, we were 
very much pained and grieved because the headless corpse 
stung us on the finger quite badly. She was dead, but it had 
not occurred to her as yet. 
We cannot pass the Diptera by without saying a word re- 
garding the mosquitoes. It is only a few years since the 
mosquito was regarded as merely a troublesome insect, annoy- 
ing but not to be regarded in any way as dangerous. To-day, 
thanks to Economic Entomology, the mosquito is known to 
be the transmitter, if not the source of yellow fever, malaria, 
and elephantiasis; three very serious diseases, all of which are 
on the wane in civilized countries, because of rational treat- 
ment made possible by the sacrifices of heroic scientific investi- 
gators. When the relation of the common house fly to disease 
shall have been fully studied we expect revelations more as- 
tounding than the facts mentioned above. There is an old ex- 
pression and I believe it is a verp ancient one, “As harmless 
as a fly.” Go back for a few hundred years to the time when 
the first rays of the light of modern hygiene had not as yet 
penetrated the inky gloom of ignorance. During the early 
part of the 17th century, in the immense city of London, be- 
fore the coming of the “Great Plague,’ and the fire that fol- 
lowed it, sanitary sewers were unknown, the gutters ran filth 
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