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CYNANCHIUM-CYNIPIDjE. 



CYNANCHIUM (Linnaeus). A genus of herbs 

 and climbing perennials, natives of many different 

 parts of the world. Linnaean class and order Pentan- 

 dria Digynia, and natural order Asclepiadete. Generic 

 character : corolla five-cleft and rotate ; corona like 

 petals, alternating with anthers, or simply five-lobed ; 

 or double, in which case the exterior is ten and inte- 

 rior five cleft. Some few of the species were formerly 

 called Asclepias, and are hardy ; some are stove, 

 others greenhouse plants. They may all be increased 

 by cuttings or divisions of the roots. 



CYNARA (Linnaeus) is the generic name of the 

 ARTICHOKE, which see. 



CYNIPIDJE, Nob. ; (Diploleparus, Latreille). A 

 family of hymenopterous insects, belonging to the 

 section Securifera (or those which are not furnished 

 with a poisonous sting), and placed by Latreille in the 

 midst of his group of parasitic species, which he has 

 termed Pu/nvora, notwithstanding the circumstances 

 that the species of which the family is composed are 

 herbivorous in their larva state. These insects are 

 small four-winged flies, formed by Linnaeus into the 

 genus Cynips. The wings are furnished with but 

 few nerves, the lower pair having but a single longi- 

 tudinal nervure ; the antennae are moderately long 

 and slender, or slightly thickened at the tips, and 

 composed of from thirteen to fifteen joints, not being 

 elbowed in the middle. The abdomen is short, com- 

 pressed, and of a rounded form, and the ovipositor, 

 which is rather long, is rolled in a spiral manner 

 within the curve of this part of the body, its extremity 

 being only exposed, and which, when not in action, 

 is lodged in a groove at the extremity, formed of 

 two flattened plates. 



Much confusion has occurred in the name of this 

 group of insects owing to the incorrect nomenclature 

 introduced by Geoffroy, and adopted by Latreille, 

 the Linnaean name Cynips having been applied to the 

 insects composing our family CkalcidicUe (which see), 

 and the new name of Diplolepis given to the Linnaean 

 Cynipes. In a paper upon this subject, published in the 

 Zoological Journal, the author of this article corrected 

 this synonyme, and has the gratification to have been 

 followed by Latreille in his last work, where the family 

 Chalcididce is described under the name of Chalcidites, 

 although the gall-flies, instead of being similarly 

 named Cynipites, are termed Gallicola:, in allusion to 

 the habits of the family, of which the species, or at 

 least their retreats, are well known to every observer 

 of nature under the form of galls and excrescences of 

 different shapes upon various kinds of trees. The 

 insects are of small size, and, as it were, hunch- 

 backed, owing to the small size and low position of 

 the head, and the elevated thorax. The galls which 

 we have mentioned are the result of wounds inflicted 

 by the parent Cynips upon the leaves, or bark of 

 various plants, in the act of depositing her eggs, 

 and which are thrust into the wound thus made. 

 How their growth, however, is effected, is a point in 

 the natural history of these insects not yet deter- 

 mined, and it is only by the microscopic observation 

 of some of our vegetable physiologists that we can 

 hope to obtain a satisfactory solution of the question. 

 It is indeed difficult to conceive how a minute egg. 

 deposited in the middle of a leaf, shall, in a short 

 time, be found removed from such situation, and fixed 

 in the centre of a vegetable mass, sometimes as much 

 as an inch from its original position, such mass being 

 in some cases dependent from the leaf at the extre- 



mity of a slender thread, somewhat like a cherry at 

 the end of its stalk. It is equally curious to consider 

 the great virulence of the fluid deposited by the 

 parent with the egg, and which has evidently the 

 effect of irritating the plant to such a degree as to 

 cause it to throw out these monstrous appendages. 

 It was indeed supposed by the early naturalists that 

 these galls were caused by the larva; when newly 

 hatched, gnawing the leaf, thereby causing its juices 

 to flow, by which it was soon surrounded, and which 

 soon became inspissated ; but as the galls are often 

 found fully formed even before the egg is hatched, 

 this opinion is untenable. But, even to the philoso- 

 phical Redi, these insects proved a stumbling block ; 

 for, notwithstanding all his splendid discoveries and 

 observations, whereby he so satisfactorily disproved 

 the doctrine of spontaneous generation, he fell into the 

 strange idea, in order to account for the development 

 of these galls, that there existed in the trees and 

 plants a vegetative kind of power, or soul, charged 

 with the care of producing the grubs ; and if, says 

 Reaumur, we are not disposed to admit that a merely 

 vegetative power would produce a gall and a gall- 

 worm, he was even disposed to believe it to be still 

 more sensitive. How humiliating is it to the proud 

 intellectual powers of the mind, that so absurd an 

 idea could have entered into the mind of Redi. Our 

 great philosopher, John Ray, after noticing this fancy 

 of Redi, and the received opinion that some insects 

 were produced from plants, tells us that " Signior 

 Malpighi, in his Treatise of Galls, under which name 

 he comprehends all preternatural and morbose tu- 

 mours and excrescences of plants, doth demonstrate, 

 in particular, that all such warts, tumours, and ex- 

 crescences where any insects are found, are excited 

 or raised up either by some venenose liquid, which, 

 together with their eggs, such insects shed upon the 

 leaves, or buds, or fiyiits of plants, or, boring with 

 their terebraa, instil into the very pulp of such buds 

 or fruits, or, by the contagious vapour of the very egga 

 themselves, producing a mortification or syderation 

 in the parts of plants on which they are laid ; or 

 lastly, by the grubs or maggots hatched of the eggs 

 laid there, making their way with their teeth into the 

 buds, leaves, or fruit, or even the wood itself of such 

 plants on which the eggs were laid. We conclude, 

 therefore, that galls and other tumours of plants are 

 nothing else but morbose excrescences raised up by 

 the force of the egg there laid, disturbing the vegeta- 

 tion and temper of the plants, and perverting the 

 motion of their humours and juices, wherein the in- 

 closed eggs and animalcules are cherished, nourished, 

 and augmented, till their proper parts being mani- 

 fested, explicated, and hardened and strengthened, 

 they are, as it were, new born, affecting to come forth 

 into the open air." Wisdom of God, p. 249. 



Some authors have considered that these galls are 

 leaves or buds modified into galls by the action of 

 the stimulating matter left in the wounds, whilst a 

 more recent writer has supposed the orifice of the 

 wound or the egg itself to be covered with gluten*, 

 which gluten prevents the sap that flows through the 

 puncture from being scattered over the leaf, and the 

 sap being thus confined to the space occupied by the 

 eggs, will expand and force outwards the pellicle of 

 gluten that confines it, ("and which, of course, forms a 



* We do not well understand how the sap can flow through a 

 puncture stopped with gluten. 



