230 
NATURE NOTES 
In conclusion, I may mention that it is one of the bravest insects which I 
know, for it seems quite willing to attack anything which annoys it, be it a stick 
or any other instrument for torment. 
Carlton House, Herne Hill, S.E. Raleigh S. S.mallman. 
November 14, 1902. 
Earwigs. — A labouring man has just shown me a large gathering in his arm 
which he and the medical man who saw it consider to have been caused by the 
sting of an earwig. Something had pricked or stung his arm, and an earwig was 
found in his sleeve. What will earwigs be accused of next? One of the popular 
myths that die so hard is that these insects have a way of creeping into the human 
ear, burrowing into the brain, and causing goodness knows what. Now, on the 
authority of a doctor, name happily unknown, the earwig has grown a sting, 
a weapon that no other beetle has. The forceps at the end of the body are too 
feeble to cause injury to man, and are admirably adapted to the special purpose 
of folding up the earwig’s large and beautiful wings — a process I have often 
watched with much delight. If people were to see the business way in which an 
earwig clears a plant of scale-insects they would wake up to the fact that this 
despised beetle has its use in the economy of nature. I know no better way 
of clearing a delicate fern of scale than to put it under a bell glass with half a 
dozen earwigs. 
Market tVeston, Thetford. Edmund Thos. Daubeney. 
October, 190Z. 
Flora of Hampstead.— In Nature Notes of February, 1902, there 
were among the “ Reviews ” a few' lines in notice of a pamphlet by Mr. James E. 
Whiting upon the above subject. Hope was expressed that at some future time 
we might hear something of the lost flora of this popular, perhaps too popular, 
district. A lady who wrote to Mr. Whiting from Yorkshire h.as in some 
measure supplied the w'ant. Her father had lived at Hampstead away back in 
the twenties and thirties of the last century, and though, as the writer pathetically 
remarked, she was now too advanced in years to hear the mellow flutings of the 
blackbird and the screechings of the swift as he raced overhead, or to see the 
wilding bloom in its natural habitat, yet had the scenes and experiences of early 
days, when she traversed heath and lane, wood and field, never dulled in her 
mind’s eye. One of her greatest pleasures in the evening of life was to live over 
again the botanical rambles of her unmarried youth in the Hampstead district. 
Proceeding, Mr. Whiting’s correspondent remarked that buckbean, cotton grass 
and sundew flourished in her time in abundance and beauty ; in one field at 
Child’s W'W ScLxifraga granulata showed in plenty; while near the Kite (now 
Leg of Mutton) Pond on the West Heath Orobanche major was to be found. 
Ertca vagans was present, though rare. Acortis Calamus grew on the banks of 
one of the ponds away towards Highgate, and near the same spot Butomus urn- 
bellatus flowered freely. Whereas Chrysosplenium oppositifolium and Digitalis 
purpurea revealed themselves to the searcher in adjacent woods more or less 
sparsely, Pedicularis sylvatica grew all over the Heath. 
Hampstead, November 7, 1902. G. A. 
[There is one mistake here. Erica vagans never grew at Hampstead, though 
E. cinerea and E. Tetralix still occur there. — E d. N.N.~\ 
White Varieties of Flowers. — It is very difficult to account for the 
occurrence of these varieties to which Mr. Millard alludes in our November 
number. In most woods which are carpeted with bluebells (Scilla festalis), there 
is a sprinkling of albino plants, in which not only the perianth but also the 
bracts are white, while the foliage and peduncle are a lighter green than in the 
others. So, too, in the case of the Betony (Stachys betonica), pink and white 
flowered fotms grow side by side with the more abundant dark red ones, and the 
absence or lessening of pigment in the corolla is accompanied by its absence in 
the “green” parts. White varieties of Self-heal (Prunella), of Orchis mascula, 
and ot many other species, suggested to me years ago that the absence of iron 
or potash in a pure chalk subsoil might be an explanation ; but it can only lie 
a partial one. The vaiiety of Herb Robert (Geranium A’obertianum), to which 
Mr. Millard refeis, is particularly interesting. It dries pink, containing, no 
doubt, some much diluted pigment ; but it retains its white flowers indefinitely 
