152 INSECT MANUFACTURES. 



might indeed be easily mistaken for the fruit of 

 the tree, by any one unacquainted with the habit 

 of the oak. It is a cone-like body, consisting of a 

 number of leafy scales overlapping each other, 

 but on being dissected it is found, like other galls, 

 to contain insects in various stages of their growth, 

 according to the season. In the same way, the 

 nut-gall, being a disease of the bud, or extremity 

 of the young shoots of the oak on which it grows, 

 has the appearance common to some other kinds 

 of fruit, and would seem to be the ordinary pro- 

 duce of the stalk, did we not find that acorns also 

 grow on the same tree. The hard and brittle 

 texture of the gall-nut also, so different from the 

 substance of our own oak-galls, would be still 

 more likely to deceive, and indeed has deceived 

 a highly respectable writer, who declares from his 

 observation of the dried galls of commerce, that 

 the nut is the fruit of a tree, and not a mere 

 excrescence.* 



How it is that the different species of gall-fly 



* Aikin. 



