Marcellus Malpighi. xi 



not always due to its biological interest. Mathiolus, one 

 of the best of the commentators of Dioscorides, and 

 a believer in spontaneous generation, declared that 

 weighty prognostications as to the events of the year 

 could generally be deduced by observing whether galls 

 contained spiders, worms, or flies. Most of the older 

 writers describe gall-flies, which are now known to be 

 agamous, as possessing males ; but their descriptions are 

 often perfectly clear, and the flies can be recognized as 

 the males of one of the Torymidae, or of some other 

 species of parasite. There is no reason to think that 

 any males of agamous species were actually in existence 

 at ihe time when these authors wrote. 



The earliest systematic writer on galls was Marcellus 

 Malpighi, Physician to Innocent XII. He was 

 Professor of Medicine at Bologna, and afterwards at 

 Messina, and his treatise ^ ' De gallis,' published in 1686, 

 gives an extremely accurate description of the galls then 

 found in Italy and Sicily. Dr. Derham, Canon of 

 Windsor, in the notes to his Boyle Lectures (1711-1712) 

 compares Malpighi's account with the galls then found 

 in England, and says, ' I find Italy and Sicily more 

 luxuriant in such productions than England, at least 

 than the parts about Upminster (where I live) are. 

 For many, if not most, of the galls about us are taken 

 notice of by him, and several others besides that I have 

 never met with, although I have for many years as 

 critically observed all the excrescences and other 

 morbid tumours of vegetables as is almost possible, 

 and do believe that few of them have escaped me ^.' 



Malpighi's work does not appear to have been 

 known either to Linnaeus or Fabricius ; they include 



' Dioscorides, i. 146, Paris, 1549. 



^ W. Derham, F.R.S., Physico-iheology, iii. c. 6. 



