64 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



When the insect wishes to deposit her eggs, she, if it be a bud 

 Tvhieh she selects, settles upon it, and having carefully examined 

 it with her antennae, passes her ovipositor under one of the 

 scales, and thrusts it, working the hair-like organs up and down 

 like saws, into the bud, until the position is reached which she 

 wishes her eggs to occupy. This operation seems to require great 

 exertion on the part of the insect. She then withdraws her 

 ovipositor, deposits an egg at the entrance, and pushes it to the 

 bottom. 



The insects which produce the Bedeguar galls were watched 

 while egg laying, and some of them spent more than twenty-four 

 hours iu oviposition, yet in spite of all this care some of the galls 

 failed to develop. 



In some species it takes the egg a long time to hatch. Dr. 

 Adler found that in one species the eggs were laid the end of 

 May, and not until September did the larvae emerge from the egg, 

 and begin gall formation. With another species, the eggs are 

 laid in October, and the galls first form in May. 



Mr. Bassett tells us that iu this country' at least two hundred 

 diflferent kinds of hymenopterous gall makers have been found, 

 and he thinks that probably as many more remain to be discovered. 

 He has himself described eight}- or more species, and has fifty 

 kinds of galls from which no flies have been reared. I have found 

 forty kinds upon oaks, of which six are not named, and eighteen 

 upon other plants, mostly' Rosacea, of which four or five are not 

 named. 



Dr. Adler thinks that the gnat galls must be produced b}- the 

 action of the larvae, because the parent has no sting, and can only 

 shove the egg into an opening bud with its extended ovipositor. 



These gall-gnats are cousins to mosquitoes, and somewhat 

 resemble them ; they belong to the order of Diptera, family Cecido- 

 m3'iad8e. The}' do not confine their attentions to two or three 

 families of plants, as do the Cynipidse, but produce galls upon mem- 

 bers of almost all the families of flowering plants ; each species, 

 however, confines itself to one, or to a few allied species of plants. 



I have fouud their galls upon St. John's-wort, clover, rose, 

 spii'sea, various composites, shad-bushes, linden, aspen, willows, 

 hickories, oaks, and in the fruit of a sedge, — about fort}- kinds in 

 all. They are especially fond of willows, hickories, composites, 

 and rosaceous plants ; one kind may be found living in lumps of 

 pitch on the twigs of pines, though these can hardlj' be called galls. 



