170 
BIRDS IN A VILLAGE, 
and many species in many places have found out 
the comfort and security of the green cylinder. 
So many did I open that I at last grew tired 
of the process, like a man to whom the post has 
brought too many letters; but there was one — 
the last I opened — the living active contents of 
which served to remind me that some insects 
are unable to make a cylinder for themselves, 
having neither gum nor web to fasten it with, 
and yet they will always find one made by others 
to shelter themselves in. Here were no fewer 
than six unbeautiful creatures, brothers and 
sisters, hatched from eggs on which their parent 
earwig sat incubating, just like an eagle or dove 
or swallow, or, better still, like a pelican; for 
in the end did she not give of her own life-fluid 
to nourish her children ? Unbeautiful, yet not 
without a glory superior to that of the Purple 
Emperor, and the angelic blue Morpho, and the 
broad- winged Ornithoptera, that caused an illus- 
trious traveller to swoon with joy at the sight 
of its supreme loveliness. Du Maurier has a 
drawing of a little girl in a garden gazing at two 
earwigs racing along a stem. " I suppose," she 
remarks interrogatively to her mamma, " that these 
are Mr. and Mrs. Earwig ? " and on being answered 
affirmatively, exclaims, " What could they have 
seen in each other?" What they saw was blue 
