302 STRANGE DWELLINGS. 



The resemblance to a veritable fruit is much closer at tlie 

 beginning of the season than in the autumn, as a number of 

 small leaf-like projections surround its base, just as if they were 

 a half-\vithered calyx. These, however, fall off as the summer 

 advances, and are no more seen. 



If the oak-apple be cut with a knife, the first touch of the 

 steel betrays a marked difference between its substance and 

 that of the cherry-gall. Its texture is neither so firm nor so 

 juicy, but is of a softer, drier, and more woolly character. More- 

 over, the knife passes through several resisting substances, 

 which, when the gall is quite severed, prove to be separate 

 cells, each containing a grub. From each of these cells, which 

 are extremely variable in number, a kind of fibre runs toward 

 the base of the gall, and it is the opinion of some naturalists 

 that these fibres are in fact the nervures of leaves which would 

 have sprung from the bud in which the gall-fly has deposited 

 her eggs, and which, in consequence of the irritating fluid in- 

 jected into the tree, are obliged to develop themselves in a 

 new manner. 



To procure the insects of this and many other galls is no 

 i^ery difficult task. The branch to which they adhere should 

 be cut off, and placed in a bottle of water, and a piece of very 

 fine gauze tied net-wise over it. The insects, although they 

 can eat their way out of the gall in which they had been bred, 

 never seem to tliink of subjecting the gauze to the same process, 

 and therefore can be always secured. It is needful, however, 

 to procure galls which are tolerably near their full age, as a 

 branch can only be kept alive for a limited time, and if the 

 supply of nourishment be cut off by the death of the branch, 

 the enclosed insect becomes stunted, if not deformed. 



The galls produced by Cynips terminalis are those which are 

 so greatly in request upon the twenty-ninth of May, and which, 

 wlien covered with gold-leaf, are the standards under which the 

 country boys are in the habit of levying contributions. A figure 

 of this gall is seen in the illustration. 



Some years ago, when I was calling at the office of the Field 



