List of the Insect Fauna of the County. 115 



reproduction are too complex to be examined or enunciated 

 here ; still this subject has such a great influence on Cynipid 

 life — the whole production of oak galls generally — that I 

 cannot pass on without shortly referring to it, more especially 

 as we have lately received such important additions to our 

 knowledge, through the discoveries of Dr. H. Adler, that 

 a radical reform of our whole nomenclature and arrangement 

 of the gall-making Cynipid^ must follow as a necessary con- 

 sequence. 



It is still a fact that in Cynips (sensu strictu) and some other 

 genera the male is quite unknown. Hartig satisfied himself 

 of this fact by collecting large quantities of the gall of 

 Dryophanta disticha (a species of w^hich the sexual form is 

 still undetermined) ; in one year he bred some 10,000 gall- 

 flies, but he failed to obtain a single male. The late Frederick 

 Smith made similar experiments on C. Kollari galls, and 

 I have myself collected these galls by the thousand in the 

 hope of breeding the long-looked-for male Cynips, but with 

 no satisfactory result. The circumstantial evidence of par- 

 thenogenetic reproduction is therefore incontrovertible ; by 

 this is understood the production of new individuals or fertile 

 ova by virgin females. Similar phenomena are known to 

 occur with insects of several orders, and it holds commonly 

 with many TenthredinidaB, which are so closely allied to the 

 Cynipidae. From Hartig' s time — the father of cecidology — 

 the Cynipidae included several agamous or asexual genera 

 besides the usual sexual genera ; amongst the gall-producers 

 such species occurred in about equal proportions. No expla- 

 nation of this anomaly was forthcoming. In America 

 Osten-Sacken and Walsh tried to cut the knot, and the 

 announcement of the discovery of a male belonging to the 

 genus Cynips was made. This species {C. sponyifica), of which 

 I exhibit male specimens, is by no means, however, a typical 

 Cynips as the genus is understood in Europe.*^^ Mr. H. F. 

 Basset t^^ was the first to adduce any substantial facts in 



3^ Dr. Mayr puts it in the genus Amphiholips, Eeinbard. 

 ■^2 " On the Habits of certain gall insects of the genus Cynips.''' ' Cana- 

 dian Entomologist,' vol. v., pp. 91—94 (May, 1873). 



