ROYAL GALLS. 



163 



the gall tubercle is caused by irritation, in the same way, as an 

 inflamed tumor in an animal body. 



We have seen now that Galls, though common things, are 

 things produced in no common way, and things involved still 

 in a certain degree of mystery. On learning this, some of 

 you, our friends, may be led perhaps to avail yourselves of the 

 coming day of oak-apples, to look beneath their surface. If 

 there be one of you accustomed to estimate Nature only by 

 her economic uses, one who has never thought of galls but 

 as associate with ink, of willows save as material for 

 baskets, of roses, save as ingredients of a pot-pourri, what 

 will you think, on finding that the oak, the willow, the briar- 

 rose, are, even in their excrescences, the supporters of animated 

 worlds ? What can you think but that your own mind must 

 have been limited within a little world indeed? a world 

 from which you will be as eager to emerge, as is the Gall-fly 

 from its oak-apple. 



ogt ropal retribution ! " 



