KNTOMOLOGICAL CABINET. 



FORFICULA AURICULARIA. Linn. 



Common Earwig. (<J) Male. 



This curious insect — " so unjustly traduced by a 

 vulgar prejudice, as if the Creator had willed that the 

 insect world should combine within itself examples 

 of all that is most remarkable in every other depart- 

 ment of nature — still more nearly approaches the 

 habits of the hen in the care of her family. She ab- 

 solutely sits upon her eggs, as if to hatch them— a 

 fact which Frisch appears first to have noticed — and 

 guards them with the greatest care. De Geer, having 

 found an earwig thus occupied, removed her into a 

 box where there was some earth, and scattered the 

 eggs in all directions : she soon however collected 

 them one by one with her jaws into a heap, and 

 assiduously sat upon them as before. The young 

 ones, strange to say, are, as soon as born, larger 

 than the eggs which contained them. Immediately 

 upon being hatched, they creep, like a brood of 

 chickens, under the belly of the mother, who very 

 quietly suffers them to push between her feet, 

 and will often, as De Geer found, sit over them in 

 this posture for some hours ! This remarkable fact I 

 have often witnessed, having found an earwig under 

 a stone, which I accidentally turned over, sitting upon 

 a cluster of young ones just as this celebrated natural- 

 ist has described." Earwigs live, but in a dormant 

 state, through the winter, buried in the earth ; and, 

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