156 LETTERS ON ENTOMOLOGY. 
If you share in the common and unjust pre- 
judice against earwigs, you will perhaps be in- 
duced to think more favourably of them when I 
tell you that they guard and sit over their young 
ones with all the care and affection of a hen. 
De Geer having found an earwig sitting on her 
eggs, removed her into a box, in which was some 
earth, and scattered the eggs in all directions ; 
she soon, however, collected them together, and 
sat upon them as before. The young ones, 
which are like the mother in all but her 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 mother, who very quietly suffers them 
to push between her feet, and will often, as De 
Geer found, sit in this posture some hours. Does 
not this fact make this poor little insect appear 
in a very amiable light ? Perhaps you may not 
know that earwigs have large wings, very cu- 
riously folded up in small cases or elytra, like 
those of beetles; they cannot, however, fly in 
the day-time. 
The lion-ant, which is an inhabitant of the 
south of Europe, is a most extraordinary insect, 
and its curious proceedings have been minutely 
detailed by Reaumur : it is the larva of the insect, 
