V,.] 



DlSi:A.sr.S OF ITIUIT-THEES. 



comes from its habit of living and breeding in rotten wood, and 

 under boards or slabs that are lying upon the ground ; but it 

 also haunts very much the cracks in bricks, and the holes in the 

 joints of walls. It feeds upon buds and blossoms, and also upon 

 the fruit itself. When it gets into hot-beds, it hides round the 

 edge of the frame, and does a great deal of mischief to the plants, 

 especially when they are young. Cabbage-leaves or lettuce-leaves 

 laid in a hot-bed or against the edge of the wall, will invite them 

 to take shelter as a place of retreat for the day, all the dilapida- 

 tions being committed in the night. You lift the leaves in the 

 day-time and kill them ; and, further, as to walls, the great 

 remedy is to keep all the joints well pointed, and to fill up any 

 cracks that there may be in the bricks. 



309. EAR- WIG. — This is a most pernicious insect, which 

 feeds on flow^ers and on fruit, and which, if it congregated like 

 the ant, would actually destroy every thing of this sort. Its 

 favourite flowers are those of the carnation kind. To protect 

 very curious plants against them, the florists put their stages on 

 leo^s, and surround each leg with a circle of w ater contained in a 

 dish which is so constructed as to admit the leg through the 

 middle of it, seeing that the ear- wig is no swimmer. Others make 

 little things of paper like extinguishers, and put them on the 

 tops of the sticks to which the carnation-stalks are tied. The 

 ear-wigs commit their depredations in the night, and they find 

 these extinguishers most delightful retreats from the angry eye of 

 man and from the burning rays of the sun. Take ofl" the extin- 

 guishers, however, in the morning, give them a rap over a basin 

 of water, and the enjoyments of the ear-wigs are put an end to at 

 once. They are very nasty things in fruit of the stone kind, and 

 particularly the apricot. They make a way in the foot-stalk of 

 the fruit, get to the stone and live there day and night ; so that, 

 when you open a fine apricot, you frequently find its fine juice 

 half-poisoned by three or four of these nasty insects. As soon, 

 therefore, as the wall-fruit begins to change its colour, the tree 

 should be well furnished with extinguishers made of cartridge- 

 paper, and able to resist a shower. By great attention in this 

 way you destroy them all before the fruit be ripe enough for them 

 to enter. But one great protection against all these creeping 

 things is to stir the ground very frequently along the foot of 



Q 



