F0RFICULID2E. 
51 
every other department in nature—still more nearly approaches the 
habits of the hen in the care of her family—she absolutely sets upon her 
eggs, as if to hatch them—a fact which Frisch appears first to have no¬ 
ticed—and guards them with the greatest care. Degeer, having found 
an earwig thus occupied, removed her into a box where there was some 
earth, and scattered the eggs in all directions. She soon, however, col¬ 
lected them, one by one, with her jaws, into a heap, and assiduously sat 
upon them as before. The young ones which resemble the parent, ex¬ 
cept in wanting elytra and wings, and, strange to say, are, as soon as 
born, larger than the eggs which contained them, immediately upon 
being hatched, creep like a brood of chickens under the belly of the mo¬ 
ther who very quietly suffers them to push between her feet and will 
often, as Degeer found, sit over them in this posture for some hours. 
This remarkable fact I have myself witnessed, having found an earwig 
under a stone which accidentally turned over, setting upon a cluster 
of young ones, just as this celebrated naturalist has described.” 
Diplatys longisetosa, Westw. has a remark¬ 
able nymph (fig. 6), in which the abdomen 
terminates in a pair of long many-join ted pro¬ 
cesses, of which the basal joint, at the final 
moult, is transformed into the forceps (Green, 
Trans. Ent. Soc., London, 1898, p. 381 [Dys- 
critina] ). 
Equally little is recorded or known of the 
food of earwigs. Apparently it consists of decay¬ 
ing vegetable matter, of pollen, of the sap of 
plants and possibly often of small insects or other 
small forms of animal life. Earwigs are found in 
decaying trees, under bark, among rotting vege¬ 
tation and the deposit of leaves under trees, under 
stones, in flowers, in the tangled roots of plants 
(e.g., sugarcane), and in other similar situations; 
they hide away and live principally under 
shelter in damp places. Their form is adapted 
to running quickly and easily among leaves, 
TOSA, NYMPH. 
[After Green). 
grass, roots ? etc., and flight is but rarely utilised. 
