PRAISE FOR EARWIGS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVI, Issue 4837, 1 June 1925, Page 3

PRAISE FOR EARWIGS.

MODEL INSECT PARENTS. SOME OF THEIR WAYS. As the time of dahlias draws on, earwigs come into prominence and cottage gardens display the age-old earwig trap, the inverted flower-pot on a stake. The earwig is well hated because of the age-old fable that it crawls through cars to brains. Few study its life history, but it is as fascinating as a story-book. The earwig te remarkable for many things, as its quick movements, its marvellous wings, its formidablelooking pincers fitted to the hindquarters. but, above all, for the mother earwigs’ love of thicr young. The normal way of an insect is to lay eggs, probably with some thought for the food of the larvae when hatched, and then to leave the rest to fate. Ants, bees, and wasps feed their grubs, but Mother Earwig goes much further, and stands on a pedestal as a model parent, one th.at sits on her eggs and broods her young like a motherly hem

For their defence she is ever ready to use her strong jaws, and if her eggs arc scattered she gathers them again as a bird takes her brood beneath her wings.

The word earwig may be a corruption of “earwing," because of the resemblance of the wing to a human car. As the wing-covers are short, the large wingts must be folded in a peculiarly complex way. But the earwig. like the crafty pheasant, prefers running to flying. To pack away the wings the pincers are useful. These weapons also give the earwig a peculiarly aggressive look, which may well scare a nervous enemy. When the earwig buries its head in a flower the obtruding pincers—the male’s curved, the female’s straighter—suggest fearsome tusks or jaws. For further protection it can give off an offensive scent.

The little girl who began and finished an essay on her dormouse with the remark, “It has no habits,” would not say this of the earwig. A marked habit is its way of running to cover, especially into tubes ; hence the tears of many a soldier in camp when, on rifle-inspection taking place, his barrel is found choked with earwigs. Soldiers accustomed to find their tents invaded by earwig swarms may profit from the hint. that. a. ring of paraffin oh the ground will be an effective safeguard. -

Gardeners have many crafty traps besides the inverted flower-pot, sometimes luring earwigs Into lobsterclaws, which they can never resistor a six-inch length of beanstalk is set among the flowers, or a, stalk of rhubarb, cut open at one end and closed by a point at the othei ; a piece of ripe apple at the upper end its a good lure, and this trap will take fully a hundred earwigs at a time. But a final note of praise for earwigs : Though they will eat dahlias, they also cat other insects than themselves, and it is possible that they arc more useful than harmful, even to gardeners. —“John o’ London’s Weekly.”