Peal 
I received this pretty creature by an accident from Scotland: the 
Duke of Athol found, this Autumn, in an oak-wood near Dunkeld, a 
Whortleberry-Shrub with white fruit: a thing not known before in 
Britain. His Grace did me the honour to fend me fome growing 
Plants of this fmall Shrub, for the garden of her Royal Highnefs 
the Princefs Dowager of Wales at Kew; and upon one of them 
eame feveral of thefe Flies wrap’d up alive, 
It feems the Tenthredo Sylvatica of the Syftema Nature of Lin- 
neus. 
The Fly is Female, that is here defcrib’d ; the Male has no Saw, 
for he has no ufe for it. Nature has given that inftrument to the Fe- 
male, to cut a way into a growing Vegetable; and there to lodge 
the eggs: which pafs through the hollow made by the two fides or 
plates of the Saw. 
The Male has in the fame place, a kind of Forceps, o: Pincers, 
which he can thruft .out, and with them feize the Female. 
Thus in larger animals, where the Female has’ teats for fuck, the 
Male has a.refemblance of them for conformity. 
When the Female lays her eggs, there goes with them an acid 
mucilaginous juice, which perverts the courfe ‘of the Sap in the 
Plant, and makes it grow into a kind of gall : this operates as foon 
as it is iffu’d, and cicatrizes the part the Saw had wounded. 
One may fee bubbles of this juice always left upon the Plant ; 
it is foft and clammy: the wound is oblong, and crooked, and the 
part becomes black as if burnt: the egg increafes in bignefs to twice 
or more than that, after it is lodg’d in the Plant; nor is this ftrange 
fince it has no hard covering. 
