248 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



large trees, and it is well known that it is only the large — I 

 may call them mature — trees that produce acorns, so the 

 injury done to them cannot be great. As regards the species 

 of this Cynips it is certainly not the C. Quercus-folii of 

 Linneus ; though the figure of the perfect insect, given by 

 J. Raemur in the ' Genera Insectorum Linnei et Fabricii,' 

 agrees pretty well, the description does not agree at all with 

 our insect." (Zool. 5074.) 



There is a phase of the subject which would demand a 

 detailed investigation here, had I not so recently urged my 

 views on the readers both of the 'Entomologist' (vol. vi. 

 p. 275) and 'Field' newspaper. There is a constant struggle 

 going on between the oak and the Cynips, the aim of the oak 

 being to reproduce its kind by seed, the aim of the Cynips to 

 utilize the oak as a nidus and a provision for its progeny ; but 

 oak-timber or oak-leaf in a normal, natural or healthy stale, is 

 not precisely the provision that the infantgall-fly would require, 

 so the parent punctures the oak, its rind, or its leaf, or its 

 leaf-stalk, or its flower, and injects a sap-poison, which totally 

 alters the condition and qualities of the sap : this in suflScient 

 abundance would kill the oak; but when we glance at the 

 comparative magnitude of the oak and its enemy, we see that 

 such a result is improbable ; still the eflfect is deleterious : the 

 oak struggles against it, and strives to perfect its normal 

 produce; the Cynips also struggles to maintain its ground: 

 each holds its own, and neither, during its brief historical 

 existence, has gained any advantage over the other; and so 

 the contest ends in a compromise. These galls are not 

 acorns, as the oak would have willed that they should be, but 

 are the nearest approach to acorns that the oak can produce* 

 under its affliction. 1 have examined hundreds, perhaps 

 thousands, of these objects during the past and present 

 autumns, and invariably with the same result. The gall 

 consists of two parts, — the larger is spherical, the smaller 



* Mr. Incbbalcl, in the ' Field' newspaper, strenuously opposed the doctrine 

 (first introduced to public notice by the editor of that newspaper), that these 

 galls are produced at the expense of the acorns. In a subsequent paper, 

 reprinted in the sixth volume of the ' Entomologist,' p. 338, Mr. Parfitt 

 expresses an oiiinion opposed to that of Mr. luchbald, and argues that the 

 solution there suggested is the correct one : Mr. Parfitt's reply is logical, and 

 extremely well argued. Of course I cannot reprint a paper so recently 

 published in this jom-nal. 



