THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 243 
therefore none on our mental perceptions or memory. Such 
paragraphs form no part of gall-history, or ant-history, or 
gnat-history: for these we must investigate more methodical 
and more reliable sources of information. The authentic 
history of the Devonshire gall, as British, commenced on the 
6th November, 1854, with Mr. Rich, who was present as a 
visitor at the meeting of the Entomological Society of London, 
and exhibited “some sprays of oak thickly covered with 
large galls. He observed that in Somersetshire, and in 
part of Gloucestershire, they were so abundant that the oaks 
were completely covered with them, to the extinction of the 
acorns,* the loss of which, for feeding their pigs, the farmers 
greatly regretted, although he believed that in the value of 
these galls they had more than an equivalent, seeing that the 
chemical properties of these galls were nearly equal to those 
of the Aleppo galls, imported for the manufacture of ink. 
Mr. Curtis said that Mr. Rich had given him an example of 
this gall, and that he had also recently received some similar 
galls, with a specimen of the fly, from his friend Mr. Walcott, 
of Bristol, who obtained them from an oak growing near the 
Hotwells, Clifton. Having paid great attention to the 
Cynipide, and bred most of those which are produced from 
oak-trees, he (Mr. Curtis) had often been doubtful respecting 
the true Cynips Quercus-petioli of Linneus; but he was 
convinced the specimen he now exhibited—which he had 
bred, with a few others, from the galls alluded to—is the 
Linnean species. Cynips Quercus-petioli is described by 
Linneus in his ‘ Fauna Suecica,’ No. 1523, where he refers to 
Resel, who has given good figures of the galls, fly, &c. 
(‘Insecten Belustigung, iii. Sup. tab. 35 and 36). The flies 
are much larger than any other species which had been 
described as British, and are nearly allied to those produced 
from the galls of commerce, the Diplolepis Gallw-tinctoriz of 
Olivier. Mr. Stainton said that for the last four or five years 
he had noticed these galls in Devonshire, but not in such 
profusion as now stated. The President had some doubts 
whether this was the Cynips Quercus-petioli of Linneus, for 
* At p. 155 of the fourth volume of the ‘ Entomologist,’ Mr. Bignell states 
that he finds galls and acorns on the same tree, and offers to send a piece of 
oak with both on it. This scarcely militates against the fact that galls are 
generally produced where acorns do not grow. 
