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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20rx, 1902. 
Dritish Wegetahle Galls, 
BY 
Mr. EDWARD - T:“CONNOLD, Ee 
With Lantern Illustrations. 
ALL is from the Latin ga//a, and is used to signify the 
excrescences or unnatural growths of vegetable substances 
which make their appearance in Spring, Summer, and Autumn as 
deformities on various parts of many trees, shrubs, and plants. 
Early writers on the subject of gall growths did not seem to 
have been able to determine how the gall fly contrived to produce 
the galls, each of which enclosed an egg. Some thought the 
grub itself caused the growth by eating, when nearly hatched 
through the cuticle of the leaf, and remained until the juices 
flowing from the wound hardened around it. Others supposed 
the eggs were deposited in the ground and being drawn up with 
the sap were carried throughout the tree until, having reached a 
certain point, its course was arrested and the formation of gall 
structure then began; and until some few years ago it remained 
more or less a mystery. Rennie, writing in 1845, “‘ was aware of 
the fundamental fact that the mother gall fly makes a hole in the 
plant for the purpose of depositing her eggs,” but he does not 
appear to have penetrated the mystery of the development of 
their growth. 
It may now safely be said that a vegetable-gall growth is 
in general an abnormal growth of piant tissue, caused by the 
presence of one or more larvee which have emerged from an egy 
or eggs that have been deposited in a perforation made by the 
parent insect in the roots, bark, and leaves of various trees, 
shrubs, and plants, the vegetable cells which accumulate around 
the larvz providing them with nourishment and shelter. 
The flowers, leaves, buds, shoots, branches, bark, stem, and 
even the roots of a large number of plants, shrubs, and trees are 
affected and attacked by various beetles, gall-wasps, saw-flies, 
gnats, moths, aphides, mites, and wormlets. The productions 
caused by this little army of invaders vary in size from very 
minute specks to swellings which attain to the size of an ordinary 
fist, the colours and shapes being equally as variable. 
The shapes are most fantastic. Some are rough and gnarled, 
while others are smooth and soft. Some are so hard that it is 
