CHAP. CV. CORYLA‘CEA. QUE‘’RCUS., 1825 
destined to wither and drop off as soon as their office of shedding the pollen 
is terminated ; but if, before they have done so, they are seized and appro- 
priated by the fly, they become permanent, and remain so until the maggot 
within the gall ceases to feed. From this circumstance, it is evident that the 
flow of the sap is in the proportion to its consumption; that ‘ bursting buds, 
lengthening shoots, expanding leaves, swelling fruit,’ or swelling galls, equally 
attract currents of sap, and, in the last instance, even into a foreign channel ; 
proving what Du Petit Thouars, and other botanists, have long ago advaneed 
as their opinion; viz. that the growth of a tree is not caused by the motion 
of the sap, but the movement of the latter 
is caused by the distension of the various 
members.” (J. Main in Gard. Mag., vol. 
xii. p. 708.) The artichoke gall, or ouk 
strobile (fig. 1650.), is probably the “ oak 
nut ” of the ancients: it is about the size of 
a filbert, and, from its closely imbricated 
scales somewhat resembling a fir strobile or 
an artichoke, it has so been termed. (2éaum. 
Meém., tom. iii. pl. 43. f. 1—12.) It is 
produced by the Cynips quércus gémme, 
and is a most beautiful foliose gall ; for the 
developement of the bud, although per- 
verted, not being wholly prevented, the 
leaves are gradually evolved. These galls,” 
says Professor Burnet, “ throw much light 
upon the natural metamorphoses of plants, 
especially on the transition from leaves to flowers, by the abortion of 
the axis of the bud, and the leaves hence becoming whorled; and, when 
the axis of each leaf (that is, its petiole and midrib) becomes in like manner 
curtailed, the gall assumes a still more florid form. Occasionally, in the 
oak, but more frequently in the willow, the gallic acid changes the ordinary 
green colour of the abortive leaves into a bright red, giving the preter- 
natural growth very much the appearance of a rose; and hence Salix Hélix, 
in which this occurs, has been not inaptly called the ‘ Rose Willow.’ The 
bedeguar, or hairy gall (Galla capillaris of the ancients), is a peculiar and 
very beautiful species, though rather scarce, for which reason it was formerly 
much esteemed. In structure it is very similar to the bedeguar of the rose ; 
and it is usually situated in the axils of the leaves. It is considered excellent 
as a styptic. Whether the ‘ oak wool,’ flocks of which were once so famed 
as wicks for lamps, but which, as Parkinson shrewdly observes, will not burn 
‘ without oyle or other unctuous matter, as Pliny saith it will, was the same 
as our cottony or woolly gall, the description of the ancient Galla lanata 
renders doubtful; for the flocks of wool are said to have been enveloped in a 
hard case; which structure is rather more analogous to that of our m tyeterr 
galls, usually about six or seven in a group, and each the habitation of a 
separate grub; as in them the little hard galls containing the insects are 
included in a soft and spongy, though not woolly, material, and are defended 
externally by a hard ligneous case: these may by some, however, be es- 
teemed the oak nuts, rather than the strobile one before alluded to.” (Aman. 
Quer. in Eidoden.) 
The oak berries, described as “sticking close to the body of the tree,” 
were, doubtless, the galls produced by the Cynips quércus ramuli, or C. q. 
cérticis ; and the U\ve quercine, or oak grapes, were, not improbably, the 
aggregation of similar galls, which are occasionally found upon the roots, or 
at the line of demarcation between root and stem, and which are produced by 
the Cynips quércus radicis. We have been favoured by the Rev. W. T. 
Bree with a very fine specimen of this gall, which he discovered, on the 22d 
of February, 1837, on the root of an oak tree (just at the surface), and which 
was at that time inhabited by a number of the Cynips quéreus radicis in the 
6c 2 
1650 
