27 
plants, though never a gall of this species on them, whereas the other 
species, inhabiting the leaves, thrives equally well on the smallest 
plants but a few inches high, as well as upon fully grown trees, and 
is therefore the more common and more numerous of the two. 
The eggs of this species are rather peculiar, quite flat, about three 
times as long as broad, and about 0.2™™" long; they are regularly oval, 
and covered with a glistening, hair-like secretion, applied to them 
when deposited, from the hair-like secretion on the abdomen of the 
female, which gives to them a hoary appearance, corresponding quite 
well with the pubescence of the twigs, and rendering them very dif- 
ficult of detection. They are at first of a pale yellowish color, but 
change gradually to a dark gray or blackish color, corresponding 
more or less closely with the color of the bark, which makes it still 
more difficult to detect them. 
They are tightly glued to the 
twigs, and are so extremely 
delicate that it is almost im- 
possible to remove them with- 
out breaking. 
The gall (Fig. 13).—At the 
time of hatching of the eggs 
of this species, which takes 
place from the middle of May 
till early in June, the young 
flower buds ‘measure about 1 
to 1.4™™ in diameter. They 
are globular, with three shal- 
low longitudinal grooves, sit- 
uated on a short, rather stout, 
and succulent petiole, which a b 
is surrounded with four or Fa. 12.—Hamamelistes spinosus: a, winter egg, much 
ee ths Pus magnified; b, twig of witch-hazel with young flower 
more small and lanceolated buds and eggs in position—natural size (original). 
leaflets. They are of a yel- 
lowish-green color and densely pubescent or hairy. The young stem- 
mother, after hatching, readily finds the buds and selects almost 
invariably that side of it directed toward the twig and settles down 
near the base in one of the grooves of the bud. The ensuing irrita- 
tion, caused by the sucking of the insect, and probably also through 
injection of an irritating fluid, checks the longitudinal growth of the 
petiole, but hastens that of the bud, especially that side of it opposite 
the insect, which at once commences to lengthen, to broaden, and to 
curve over toward the gall-maker, and to acquire a beautiful rosy color. 
The formation of the young gall proceeds rapidly, so that within a few 
days the insect is completely inclosed, leaving but a transverse scar 
and small opening where the insect had settled, by which time the 
original structure and component parts of the buds have become com- 
