Sticklers. 9835 



shorter, and composed of flattened segments, which are notched at the 

 sides, where they move one over the other, and have each, on the 

 under side, a little knob and a tooth. 



The eggs, which I took from the abdomen of the female, were deep 

 yellow, long and reniforra. 



It seems to me that this species is more especially peculiar to this 

 country, as I find it mentioned in Hartig's work only, and he slates that 

 he had seen but two examples. It is, however, very possible that it is 

 abundant in England, and is one of the species named, but not 

 described, by Stephens (see Cmtis, Brit. Ent. No. 457). 



Campoplex argentatus, Grav., has appeared with me as a parasite 

 on this insect. 



Note on Eanoigs. — I have never known these pests of the garden more numerous 

 or more destructive than they have been this season; nothing seems to have come 

 amiss to them. Apricots, a plentiful crop, have been especially favoured by their 

 atlenlions. A small hole was generally drilled from the top of the fruit down to the 

 slone, and down this small hole, just large enough lo admit of their passage, the 

 happy pair passed into the interior of the fruit to revel in plenty. Unless carefully 

 examined it is impossible to detect the injury until the apricot begins to rot, which it 

 does rapidly after the insects have eaten the pulp round the stone. Behind some of 

 the fruit a complete colony could be found, being, I suppose, the parents and their 

 brood. I found behind a nectarine a colony consisting of twenty. The cast-off skins 

 of the young were often found in the apricots. Double hollyhock-flowers are favourite 

 resorts of the earwigs, amongst the petals of which they lie hid, and I have little 

 doubt that they prey upon Hymenopterous insects that come to seek food in the 

 flowers, for I have frequently found such insects stuck in the flowers, minus the head, 

 and I never found them so stuck but I found two or more earwigs in the same flower. 

 I have paid great attention to earwigs for the last four years, and I believe them to be 

 very loving and attentive to their young, who follow their parents about as chickens 

 follow a hen, and they keep together, unless forcibly broken up, from their birth until 

 the next spring. — John Ranson ; York. 



The Greater Horse-shoe Bat (Rhinolophus ferrum-equinum) in Dorsetshire.— Onx 

 knowledge of the distribution of the British Cheiroptera is so imperfect that it seems 

 worth while to record any new station where the several species are observed. While 

 on a visit to a relative at Tomson Manor House, in Dorsetshire, at the eud of 

 September, I found a large bat flying round my bed-room one night when I went to 

 bed. The room, a fine Elizabethan chamber, was sufficiently large to observe its 

 character of flight. From the size of the bat I at first thought it a Noctule, which I 

 have repeatedly shot on Tomson Manor; but its flight was feeble and slow in com- 

 parison with that of the latter bat. Without much ditficuliy the bat was secured: it 

 proved 10 be a large male "greater horse-shoe." The measurements exceeded those 



