In respect of the number of things that eat you
in the country, there is certainly one plague. Earwigs so swarm that, according to one correspondent, they may seriously interfere with the pleasure of a country holiday. I am asked how to keep. them out of upper rooms at any rate. It is certainly an unfortunate quality in this furtive insect that it likes to climb upwards and to seek an obscure crevice. The inverted flower-pot on a stick which is the standard gardener's device for trapping them—especially among- his dahlias, their favourite food—seldom fails. The surest find is a poppy-head. They live in astonishing numbers in the seed heads. Last year I went through a thick patch of poppies and failed to find one seed case which they had not quite cleaned out. It would be interesting to know if anyone had ever discovered a method of keeping the upper rooms of a house immieulate. They do little harm there, but are certainly a nuisance. The nippers on the 'tail are designed to help in folding up the very neat and
lovely, but seldom seen and seldom used, wings, but they can on occasion, as the Town children fear, inflict a mild pinch. I have never yet heard of the creature—once known by the charming name of " erewiggle "—entering the human ear, though in most languages its name contains the native word for ear.
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