The above instances of beetle-intelligence lead me to credit the following, which has been communicated to me by Dr. Garraway, of Faversham. On a bank of moss in the Black Forest he saw a beetle alight with a caterpillar which it was carrying, and proceed to excavate a cylindrical hole in the peat, about an inch and a half deep, into which, when completed, it dropped the caterpillar, and then flew away through the pines. 'I was struck,' says my correspondent, 'with the creature's folly in leaving the whole uncovered, as every curious wayfaring insect would doubtless be tempted to enter therein. However, in about a minute the beetle returned, this time carrying a small pebble, of which there were none in the immediate vicinity, and having carefully fitted this into the aperture, fled away into space.' _Earwig._ I must devote a short division of this chapter to the earwig. M. Geer describes a regular process of incubation as practised by the mother insect. He placed one with her eggs in a box, and scattered the eggs on the floor of the latter. The earwig, however, carried them one by one into a certain part of the box, and then remained constantly sitting upon the heap without ever quitting it for a moment. When the eggs were hatched, the young earwigs kept close to their mother, following her about everywhere, and often running under her abdomen, just as chickens run under a hen.[96] A young lady, who objects to her name being published, informs me that her two younger sisters (children) are in the habit of feeding every morning with sugar an earwig, which they call 'Tom,' and which crawls up a certain curtain regularly every day at the same hour, with the apparent expectation of getting its breakfast. This resembles analogous instances which, have been mentioned in the case of spiders. _Dipterous Insects._ The gad-fly, whose eggs are hatched out in the intestines of the horse, exhibits a singular refinement of instinct in depositing them upon those parts of the horse which the animal is most likely to lick. For, according to Bingley and other writers, 'the inside of the knee is the part on which these flies principally deposit their eggs; and next to this they fix them upon the sides, and the back part of the shoulder; but almost always in places liable to be licked by the tongue.' The female fly deposits her eggs while on the wing, or at least scarcely appears to settle when she extends her ovidepositor to touch the horse. She lays only a single egg at a time--flying away a short distance after having deposited one in order to prepare another, and so on. The following anecdote, which I quote from Jesse, seems to indicate no small degree of intelligence on the part of the common house-fly--intelligence, for instance, the same both in kind and degree as that which was displayed by Sir John Lubbock's pet wasp already mentioned: