DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 3)7 



our best afFections, or is the instrument of producino- 

 more valuable fruits of human wisdom and genius, than 

 the product of the animal to which I have just alluded. 

 You will readily conjecture I mean the fly that gives 

 birth to the gall-nut from which ink is made. — How 

 infinitely are we indebted to this little creature, which 

 at once enables us to converse with our absent friends 

 and connexions be their distance from us ever so srreat, 

 and supplies the means by which, to use the poet's lan- 

 guage, we can 



^' give to airy nothing 



A local habitation and a name!" 



enabling the poet, the philosopher, the politician, the 

 moralist, and the divine, to embody their thoughts for 

 the amusement, instruction, direction and reformation 

 of mankind. — The insect which produces the gall-nut 

 is of the genus Cyn'ips of Linne, but was not known to 

 him or to Fabricius. Olivier first described it under 

 the name o^ Diplolepis gallce tinctorice^. The galls ori- 

 ginate on the leaves of a species of oak ( ^^^erc?/^ infec- 

 ioria, Oliv.) very common throughout Asia Minor, in 

 many parts of which they are collected by the poorer 

 inhabitants and exported from Smyrna, Aleppo, aod 

 other ports in the Levant, as well as from the East In- 

 dies, whither a part of those collected are now carried. 

 The galls most esteemed are those known in commerce 

 under the name of blue galls, being the produce of the 

 first gathering before the fly has issued from the gall. 

 It will not be uninteresting to you to know, that from 

 these when bruised may occasionally be obtained per- 



" Encydop. Insect, vi. 981. It had better, perhap?, a; compoimd Trl- 

 vlaJ Names are bad, be called C^nipe Scriplortim. 



