Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Entomology.djvu/226

220 petals, and many of the most cherished ornaments of the flower border, particularly the stately dahlia, are frequently rendered unseemly by their attacks. The common earwig is widely distributed, and has been found as far north as Boothia. The common names given to this insect in Britain are rather peculiar, and it is not easy to say what circumstances have suggested them. Throughout the south of Scotland it is known to the peasantry by the name of coachbell, for what reason I am unable to conjecture. Mr. Newman suggests that earwig, an unmeaning term, may be a corruption of earwing, as the wing is shaped very like the human ear, an explanation not unlikely to be the true one. Several anomalies have already been alluded to in the structure of earwigs, and it remains to be added that a very remarkable one also occurs in their economy. Frisch, De Geer, and many other entomologists have observed the female watching over her eggs with great care, and even covering them with her body as if on purpose to hatch them, a fact whicb is well known to those who are in the habit of overturning stones in search of insects. This is a remarkable contrast to the practice of nearly all other insects, whose maternal duties entirely cease with the deposition of the eggs, which they abandon to every hostile influence. The young seem to appreciate and return their mother's affection, for they have been seen nestling under their parent like chickens under a hen. It must not be imagined, as some appear to have done, that the incubation alluded to is designed to hatch