1864.] 551 



themselves or for that future progeny which they are doomed never to 

 behold. Under every stone, under every clod, and even under the 

 most despised substances, there is a little world in miniature opened to 

 his eyes. And there scarcely grows a plant but what contains, in Na- 

 ture's own hieroglyphs, a whole volume of Natural History written by • 

 the finger of the Great Author of our being. 



DIPTERA. — Family Cecidomyid^. 



Many years ago, before the science of Entomology had any exist- 

 ence, the old herbalist Grerard, noticing a rose-like gall very abundant 

 on a British species of willow, concluded that it was a purely vegetable 

 production, and that the willow which bore it formed a distinct species, 

 which he accordingly named " the Rose-willow" ; and even Swammer- 

 dam, who ought to have known better, fell into the same error. (Kby & 

 Sp. Litr. Letter 14, p. 254. Westw. Intr. II. p. 519.) Up to a very re- 

 cent date, from some unaccountable cause, entomologists who recognized 

 this gall as the work of injects, attributed it, not to a gall-gnat nor even to 

 a saw-fly, but to a Cj/nij^s. (K.hy& Sip. ibid.) Westwood, however, clearly 

 recognizes the gall of the " Rose-willow" as the work of a Cecidomyia, 

 {Introd. II. p. 519,) and I am indebted to Baron Osten 8acken for the fol- 

 lowing quotations from Dr. Hartig in reference to this matter. " There 

 are no Gi/nipldse on the willow, and the galls ascribed to Ct/nips vimi- 

 nalis, G. caprex, C. amerinse and G. salicis strobili belong either to 

 Cecidomi/ise, or Aphides." (Germ. Zeitsch. II. p. 176.) — " I doubt very 

 much whether other than parasitical Gall-flies [Figitidse ?] occur on the 

 willow." {Ibid. IV. p. 421.) To which it is added that " three species 

 of Xystus ( = the Figitide genus Allotria) are described by Hartig as 

 being bred from the willow-gall of the Tenthredo Nematus ValUs- 

 nieriir 



As already stated, all the true Willow-galls I have so far met with 

 are the work either of gall-gnats or of saw-flies, and none that I have 

 seen are produced by Aphidae., as seems to be asserted above of certain 

 European willow-galls by Hartig. I once, indeed, found a colony of a 

 species of Aphis, that inhabits S. cordata, surrounded by what at first 

 sight looked like a large, subspherical gall ; but on breaking it open I 

 saw at once that it was the work of the attendant ants, and composed 

 of particles of dry vegetable matter agglutinated together, in the man- 



