EARWIGS AND ROSES.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1521, 26 February 1886, Page 3

EARWIGS AND ROSES.

Earwigs are so well known that description is useless; they are Bomewhat closely related to the beetles, and like some of them are most destructive in the perfect form. Tbey are furnished with a powerful projecting forceps, a most formidable weapon of defence and offence. They increase rapidly, and are most formidable in their destructive and consumptive pover, eating roses, fruit, and almost anything that comes in their way. They also choose the choicest roseblooms for laying-places as well as feeding-grounds, especially in the autumn, and thus mar the enjoyment of many a rose in hand or vase of roses on table. Tbey abound especially in old neglected gardens in the close vicinity of thacthed houses, barns, or other buildings, and wherevpr neglect, decay, and slovenly gardening finds a home. They hate constant disturbance, the rooting out of their lairs in decayed boughs or branches, hid away under oil sheds, in holes in walls, even the ground near the boles of trees. Using the hoe freely among and around roses, bothers the earwigs into shifting their quarters. Tbey may also be routed out or snared in dry cut reeds and the hollow stems of any umbelliferous pi ants,"trapped in pots baited with cold potatoes covered with hay; all traps and decoys to be examined, and the contents destroyed daily. Such tactics pursued with diligence will speedily make an end of the troublesome pest ot earwigs among the roses.