HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 447 



smooth fleshy consistence, resembling beautiful fruits, 

 for which indeed, as you have before been told, they are 

 eaten in the Levant : others, beset with spines or clothed 

 with hair, are so much like seed-vessels, that an eminent 

 modern chemist has contended respecting the Aleppo 

 gall, that it is actually a capsule 3 . Some are exactly 

 round ; others like little mushrooms ; others resemble 

 artichokes ; while others again might be taken for flow- 

 ers : in short, they are of a hundred different forms, and 

 of all sizes from that of a pin's head to that of a walnut. 

 Nor is their situation on the plant less diversified. Some 

 are found upon the leaf itself ; others upon the footstalks 

 only ; others upon the roots ; and others upon the buds 5 . 

 Some of them cause the branches upon which they grow 

 to shoot out into such singular forms, that the plants pro- 

 ducing them were esteemed by the old botanists distinct 

 species. Of this kind is the Rose-willow, which old Ge- 

 rard figures and describes as "not only making a gallant 

 shew, but also yeelding a most cooling aire in the heat 

 of summer, being set up in houses for the decking of the 

 same." This willow is nothing more than one of the 

 common species, whose twigs, in consequence of the de- 

 position of the egg of a Cynips in their summits, there 

 shoot out into numerous leaves totally different in shape 

 from the other leaves of the tree, and arranged not much 

 unlike those composing the flower of a rose, adhering to 

 the stem even after the others fall off. Sir James Smith 

 mentions a similar lusus on the Provence willows, which 



a Aikin's Dictionary of Chemistry, i. 455. What have probably 

 been taken by Mr. Aikin for " kernels," in the imperforated nuts, 

 are the cocoons of the inhabitants of these galls in the pupa state, 

 which often extremely resemble the seeds of a capsule, as Reaumur 

 (iii. 429.) has remarked. b Reaum. iii. 417, &c. 



