CYNIPS. 
270 
mer. These are caused by the Cynips viminalis of 
Linnreus, a small species, of a yellow colour, with 
a black thorax. It is one of the most common of 
the genus, and affords one of the most familiar 
examples. It changes to chrysalis in the autumn, 
and lies in that state all winter in the fallen leaf, 
the perfect insect making its appearance in the 
succeeding spring. 
With respect . to the common Oak-Galls, a 
popular superstition has sometimes been enter- 
tained, that the great events of the ensuing year 
might be predicted by observing the prevailing 
animals found in their cavity, and the learned Sir 
Thomas Brown, in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 
has thought it worth his while, with much gravity, 
to explode this conceit; and it is curious to ob- 
serve that this truly great man, while he success- 
fully combats one popular error, falls himself into 
another, for want of that philosophical knowledge 
of Insects which later times have succeeded in 
obtaining. 
“ The presage of the year succeeding, which is 
commonly made from insects or little animals in 
Oak-Apples, according to the kinds thereof, either 
maggot, fly, or spider; that is of famine, war, 
or pestilence; whether we mean that woody ex- 
crescence which shooteth from the branch about 
May, or that round and apple-like accretion which 
groweth under the leaf about the latter end of 
summer, is, I doul)t, too indistinct, nor verifiable 
from event. For flies and maggots are found 
