4 
CABBAGE, ETC. 
On suggesting to Mr. Sutton the possibility of silos being centres 
or starting-points for Earwig attack, lie favoured me with the following 
reasons against this being likely :— 
“ I do not think silos have anything to do with the Earwig plague. 
There is no silo anywhere near here. I imagine the Earwigs were in 
the grass before it was put in the silo, just as they were in the corn as 
it was carted to the ricks at my farm. The beds of the carts and the 
ground underneath at the sides of the ricks were black with them, and 
a sample of wheat threshed on the field was full of Earwig bodies, 
dead and alive.” 
The above notes refer (as will have been seen) to presence of the 
Earwigs in common farm crops, as Turnips, Thousand-headed Kale, 
Kohl Eabi, Mangolds, and also in Wheat: the following note refers 
also to damage done to Tobacco grown as a field crop. 
About the middle of July communication was sent me by Mr. A. 
Bayfield, by desire of Mr. Faunce de Laune, of Sharsted Court, near 
Sittingbourne, relatively to attack of Earwigs on his experimental 
Tobacco plantation. At first it did not seem quite certain whether 
the injury was caused by Earwigs or caterpillars, and relatively to this 
point Mr. Bayfield forwarded the following note on July 16th ;— 
“ I caught a few Earwigs and put them in a bottle, and also some 
Tobacco leaves on the 14th hist., and find that the Earwigs have eaten 
some of the leaves ; but I believe they have eaten the fleshy part of 
the stem more than the thin part of the leaf. I notice also that the 
small leaves of the tops are eaten full of holes in some places, and 
I have seen Earwigs at night on them, which I believe eat the holes. 
Earwigs are to be found here this season in swarms, and also in other 
parishes where I have been.” 
Further experiments carried on showed unmistakably that the 
Earwigs fed on the Tobacco, as the leaves sent, which had been placed 
with some of the insects in a bottle, were gnawed into good-sized 
holes. The specimens sent proved to be of the Forjicula borealis. 
It was further mentioned, with regard to the “ tremendous swarms 
of Earwigs, that not only are they eating the Tobacco, but also 
Turnips and Thousand-headed Kale, and some of the latter have been 
destroyed by these insects ; and one has only to turn over a piece of 
earth in some fields, and several Earwigs are turned out.” 
In the above observations there is no clue to where this enormous 
invasion of Earwigs came from. 
Earwigs lay their eggs in sheltered places, as in manure-heaps, 
under clods of earth, &c., and it is stated that the female watches her 
eggs, and even the young after they are hatched, with great care. In 
the case of the common Earwig, the Forjicula auriculaiia, the female 
lays her eggs early in the year under stones, in holes in the earth, or 
