HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 449 



scendants. I allude to those vegetable excrescencies 

 termed galls, some of which resembling beautiful ber- 

 ries and others apples, you must have frequently ob- 

 served on the leaves of the oak, and of which one spe- 

 cies, the Aleppo gall, as I have before noticed, is of 

 such importance in the ingenious art " de peindre la 

 parole et de parler aux 7/eux.''^ All these tumours owe 

 their origin to the deposition of an eg^ in the sub- 

 stance out of which they grow. This g^^, too small 

 almost for perception, the parent insect, a little four- 

 winged fly, introduces into a puncture made by her cu- 

 rious spiral sting, and in a few hours it becomes sur- 

 rounded 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 smooth fleshy 

 consistence, resembling beautiful fruits, for which in- 

 deed, as you have before been told, they are eaten in 

 the Levant : others, beset with spines or clothed with 

 hair, are so much like seed-vessels, that an eminent 

 modern chemist has contended respecting the Aleppo 

 gall, that it is actually a capsule''. Some are exactly 

 round ; others like little mushrooms ; others resemble 

 artichokes ; while others again might he taken for 

 flowers : in short, they are of a hundred different forms, 



* h.\k\a's Dictionary of Chemistry, i. 455. What have probably been 

 taken by Mr. Aikiii for " kernels," in the imperforated nuts, are the 

 cocoons of the inhabitants of these galls in the pupa state, which often 

 extremely resLinble the seeds of a capsule, as Reaumur (.ill. 429.) has 

 remarked. 



VOL. I. 2 e 



