446 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



ing vacuity of the hole; taking down the pellets, which 

 are very conveniently at hand, and placing them in it 

 until the entrance is filled^. — Latreille informs us, that 

 a nearly similar tunnel, but composed of grains of earth, 

 is built at the entrance of its cell by a bee of his family 

 of^^z'o/zeers''. 



Under this head, too, may be most conveniently ar- 

 ranged the very singular habitations of the larvae of the 

 Linnaean genus Cijnips, the gall-fly, though they can 

 with no propriety be said to be con&tructed by the mo- 

 ther, who, provided with an instrument as potent as an 

 enchanter's wand, has but lo pierce the site of the foun- 

 dation, and commodious apartments, as if by magic, 

 spring up and surround the germe of her future de- 

 scendants. I allude to those vegetable excrescencies 

 termed galls^ some of which resembling beautiful berries 

 and others apples, you must have frequently observed 

 on the leaves of the oak, and of which one species, the 

 Aleppo gall, as 1 have before noticed, is of such import- 

 ance in the ingenious art " de jpeindre la j^arole et de 

 parler aux yeux'^." All these tumours owe their origin to 

 the deposition of an egg in the substance out of which 

 they grow. This egg, too small almost for perception, 

 the parent insect, a little four-winged fly, introduces into 

 a puncture made by her curious spiral sting, and in a 

 few hours it becomes surrounded with a fleshy chamber, 

 which not only serves its young for shelter and defence, 

 but also for food ; the future little hermit feeding upon 

 its interior and there undergoing its metamorphosis. 

 Nothing can be more varied than these habitations. 

 Some are of a globular form, a bright red colour, and 



' Reaum. vi. 251-7. t. xxvi. /. 1. ^ Latr. Fourmis, 419. 



' See above, p. 317 — . 



