ON ENTOMOLOGY. "27 



duce the hollow miniature apples, each inclosing one of her eggs ; and 

 the doubts attendant upon the subject cannot, so far as our present 

 knowledge extends, be solved except by plausible conjectures. Our 

 earlier naturalists were of opinion, that it was the Grub which produced 

 the galls, by eating, when newly hatched, through the cuticle of the leaf, 

 and so remaining till the juices flowing from the wound enveloped it, 

 and acquired consistence by exposure to the air. This opinion, how- 

 ever plausible as it appeared to be, was at once disproved by finding un- 

 hatched eggs on opening the galls. There can be no doubt, indeed, that 

 the mother Gall Fly makes a hole in the plant for the purpose of de- 

 positing her eggs. She is furnished with an admirable ovipositor for that 

 express purpose, and Swammerdam actually saw a Gall Fly thus depo- 

 siting her eggs. 



In some of these insects the ovipositor is conspicuously long, even 

 when the insect is at rest, but in others not above a line or two of it is 

 visible till the belly of the insect is pressed. When this is done to the 

 Fly that produces the currant gall of the oak, the ovipositor may be seen 

 issuing from a sheath in the form of a small curved needle, of a chesnut 

 brown colour, and of a horny substance, and three times as long as it 

 first appeared. What is most remarkable in this ovipositor is, that it is 

 much longer than the whole body of the insect in whose belly it is 

 lodged in a sheath, and from its horny nature it cannot be either short- 

 ened or lengthened. It is on this account, that it is bent into the same 

 curve as the body of the insect. The mechanism by which this is 

 effected is similar to that of the tongue of a Woodpecker (Picus), which, 

 though rather short, can be darted out far beyond the beak, by means of 

 the hyoid-bone (a forked bone at the root of the tongue), being thin, 

 and rolled up like the spring of a watch. 



The nest of the Common Wasp ( Vespa Vulgarii) attracts more or less 

 the attention of everybody ; but its interior architecture is not so well 

 known as it deserves to be for its singular ingenuity, in which it rivals 

 even that of the Hive Bee (Apis Mellifica). In their general economy, 

 the Social or Republican Wasps closely resemble the Humble Bee (Bom- 

 bus), every colony being founded by a single female, who has survived 

 the winter, to the rigours of which all her summer associates and work- 

 ing Wasps usually fall victims ; nay, out of three hundred females 

 which may be found in one vespiary or Wasp's nest, towards the close of 

 the autumn, scarcely ten or a dozen survive till the ensuing spring, at 

 which season they awake from their hybernal lethargy, and begin with 

 ardour the labours of colonization. It may be interesting to follow one 

 of these Mother Wasps through her several operations, in which she 

 merits more the praise of industry, than the Queen of a Bee-hive ; who does 

 nothing, and never moves without a numerous train of obedient retainers, 

 always ready to execute her commands and do her homage. The Mother 

 Wasp, on the contrary, is at first alone, and is obliged to perform every 

 species of drudgery herself. Her first care, after being roused to ac- 



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