EARWIG ( AS. rortrirqa. from ,lore . Eng. car fricou. insect ; eonneeted with AS. /ricg, horse.
wilt, wiglit. from we-gun, Icel. r17711. (111t 11 . you i. gun. CMG., Ger. :regal', to ea•ry, move: connect ed with Lat. rchere, ()Church Slay. re.ai, Skt. 1;0/, to carry. Gk. Flew, ,chrin, to hold). A pop ular name for orthopter ons insects of the family Forficuliike, resembling rove-beetles, but easily ilistinguished front them by the presence of like proeesses at the terior end of the men. They probably owe their name to the foolish belief that they creep into the ears of sleepers. Earwigs are Pollution in the United States only in the Southern States and on the Pacific Coast. They are fond of moist situations, such as under the decayed bark of trees, under stones, among old straw, etc. They are noc turnal in habit, and while their food is chiefly vegetable, such as flowers and ripe fruit, they probably do much good by destroying numbers I if thrips, aphids. etc. The mime is also applied
in the United States to several small centipedes which frequent houses.
FossIL EA RWIGS. The earliest known ancestor of the earwigs, a fossil genus (Ilaseopsis) from the Liassie rocks of Schaniladen. Switzerland, is considered an interesting link connecting the Orthoptera and Coleoptera. Another Alesozoic genus is knimn in the Solculunen Iiinestones of Bavaria. Tertiary earwigs have been found in the amber of northeastern in the beds of Aix, France, and Oeningen, Germany. and eleven species are known in the Oligocene shales of Eltwissant. C'ol. These latter include some very large species with unusually large eyes. Sec Unlit OPTERA.
Sec bibliography under OartiorrtatA: also de Borman; and Krauss. and lleini ineridab,” in Dos Tierrcich, ii. Lieferung (Berlin, 1900).