JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS. 
xliii 
oak-leaves, (called oak-spangles,) and which had been regarded 
by some authors as cryptogamous parasites upon the leaves, no 
insects having been observed in the interior of them. 
“ Mr. Smith states that in the beginning of March, in a mossy 
hollow at the top of Coombe Wood, were large drifts of oak-leaves. 
He observed that most of the leaves had these excrescences on 
their under-sides, but they were dried up and withered as well as 
the leaves. He broke many of them, but to no purpose ; they ap- 
peared nothing but remains of withered fungus. He next removed 
large masses of leaves, and found that those more towards the bot- 
tom of the heap, although withered themselves, had the fungus 
upon them quite fresh, as when on the trees in summer. He cut 
open one of these, and to his astonishment a small black insect, 
with four wings and rather red legs, crawled out. He then opened 
a great many of these apparently fresh ones, and out of each ex- 
tracted a fly. This led him to further observation ; — when he 
found that those leaves, which from their depth under the mass 
had been kept moist, produced the perfect insect, — those which 
were lower down, and soaking wet, contained the insect in an 
earlier stage, and some which he found in a watercourse had 
merely a small grub, so nearly resembling the pulp of the gall, (as 
he supposed he might call if,) that it required some attention to 
distinguish it. The galls on the leaves on the surface of the heaps, 
as he before observed, were dried up. fie also examined some of 
the leaves which still remained on the trees, but although they 
were covered with galls, they had withered, and consequently the 
insect had perished. So that it appeared that the insect must re- 
main in the egg state until late in the autumn, and that its deve- 
lopment is the result of the accident of the leaf being so situated 
during the winter months, that it shall acquire a sufficient degree 
of moisture to keep the gall in a fresh or growing state, to serve 
as nutriment for the insect, which he should imagine is nourished 
by its juices. He found two or three flies among the leaves al- 
ready developed, but from the various stages in which he found 
the insect in the galls, he concluded that the majority would be 
some weeks before they would make their appearance. 
“ The leaves which had the galls on them containing the fly 
could hardly be moved without their falling off. Those in an 
earlier stage were attached more firmly, and the withered galls 
adhered rather strongly.”* 
* Nees von Esenbeck (Hym. Monogr. ii. 266) and Reaumur were unable to 
form any notion as to the production of these “ gallcs en shampignon,” as these 
