^^ AND ^^/.^ 



JOURNAL OF VARIATION. 



Xo. 11. Vol. VI. July 15th, 1895. 



£ jJunt for tlie ./Ipril Spangle Qall. 



By T. A. CHAPMAN, IM.D., F.E.S. 



A few weeks ago, Mr. IJignell asked me to get him some of the 

 galls of Neuroterits apriliUKH ; so, of course, I did so. I ])ersuaded 

 mj'self that I did so for sundry reasons — such as my regard for Mr. 

 Bignell and his work ; the certaint}' of his detecting me if I made any 

 lazy excuses, such as want of time or ignorance of the game. But I 

 have a sad suspicion that the real reason for my getting them was, that 

 I could not resist the excuse for a hunt. Latterly I have treated ento- 

 mology more from the student's than from the hunter's point of view, 

 chiefly because my o|)portunities for such hunting as I understood were 

 extremely limited. Naturam furca expeUes — the old Adam was still 

 there, and the chance of a hunt could not be resisted. Ncnroterns 

 aprilinns, though one of the spangle gall flies, does not make a sjiangle 

 gall. I may confess that, except fcjr a little information obtained from 

 Mr. Bignell, my knowledge of galls of all kinds is of the slenderest. 

 I was to look for a gall appearing from the 25th of April to the l)eginning 

 of May, and a description of it was to be found in Cameron, vol. iv., 

 p. 139. It appears with the opening buds, pi'esenting itself instead of 

 the proper catkins or leafy shoot. My hunting ground, without goii:';- 

 far afield, consists of the lower boughs, just above the browsing line, 

 of a score or two of oak trees that may fairly be descril)ed as fine park 

 timber. This year the oaks were a week or ten days late, and my first 

 few searches were quite l>lunk. At length, I met with a couple of galls 

 that looked hopeful anfi were pronounced by Mr. Bignell to be the 

 genuine aprilinns. Witli this encouragement, and with the advancing 

 expansion of the oak l)uds, I made some more successful searches. By 

 this time, the days were very warm, and the progress made by the oaks, 

 as by other vegetation, was extremely rapid. This was about the 1st 

 and 2nd of May. I now knew what to search for, but my knowledge 

 was gained at the expense of letting the season go by. I met with a 

 tree that was very freely covered with the galls, but already they were 

 nearly all empty ; afterwards, liowever, I found two other trees well 

 tenanted, and succeeded in finding some full galls. Cameron says that 

 they yield up the perfect fly within three days of the appearance of the 



