1 7 2 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



mented their deficiencies by descriptions of galls not 

 previously on record from Scotland, and by giving names 

 of others the makers of which had not been previously 

 identified. That the observations were fairly thorough may 

 be inferred from the fact that in the districts most wrought 

 by me I have found very few novelties for a good many 

 years past. The district around Glasgow, and, to a less 

 extent, some other regions in the West of Scotland, have 

 had their galls investigated by Mr. Peter Cameron, whose 

 discoveries are recorded largely in the publications of 

 Glasgow Natural History Societies, as well as in the 

 " Scottish Naturalist," the " Entomologist's Monthly Mag- 

 azine," and other scientific journals. The true Gall-flies, or 

 Cynipidcs, and the Gall -making Saw-flies, have been well 

 treated of in Mr. Cameron's great work in four volumes 

 (issued by the Ray Society), under the name of "The 

 British Phytophagous Hymenoptera." Mr. F. G. Binnie. in 

 1876, published in the Transactions of the Glasgow Societies 

 some short but valuable papers on the Ceddomyidce, or 

 Gall-midges, of the neighbourhood of Glasgow. 



For a good many years very little additional information 

 has been published about the galls of Scotland, or indeed of 

 any part of the British Islands ; and the few notes that have 

 appeared are apt to be overlooked in the absence of any 

 index to the very scattered literature of the subject. Though 

 the galls of a very few districts have been collected with 

 some care, and described with sufficient fulness to permit 

 their recognition in most cases, these districts form but a 

 very small part of our islands ; and very little, if anything, is 

 on record about the distribution of the gall-makers in Britain 



as a whole. 



During the past two decades much has been done on the 

 continent of Europe in the careful investigation of the life- 

 histories and of the structure of the gall-makers, especially 

 of the less conspicuous forms produced by nematoid worms, 

 mites, and midges ; and our earlier British records demand 

 reconsideration in the light of this fuller information. 1 

 have for some time been engaged in collecting all the 

 information I can obtain upon galls, in the hope of being 

 able to bring our knowledge of the galls of the British 



