OAK-APPLES. 303 



newspaper, then recently started in its race for popularity, I was 

 shown some oak-branches containing a vast number of hard, 

 woody, spherical galls, and asked if I could tell the name of the 

 insect which had produced them. They had recently made 

 their appearance in the country, and no one knew anything 

 about them. A branch beset with these galls is shown in the 

 right hand upper corner of the illustration, the figures being 

 necessarily much reduced. 



I was totally unacquainted with them, but, in the following 

 year, found many of them on Shooter's Hill, in Kent, where 

 the growth of oaks is very dense. At the present day they have 

 increased so rapidly that they outnumber almost every species, 

 if we except the tiny spangle-galls; and I have bred great quan- 

 tities of the insect. The creature which made them is named 

 Cynips Kollai'i, in honour of the celebrated entomologist, and 

 is plentiful on the Continent. I believe that it has long been 

 known in Devonshire, though in Kent it has ^ply recently made 

 its appearance. 



The galls produced by this insect are wonderfully spherical, 

 of a brown colour, smooth on the exterior, and about as large 

 as white-heart cherries. Each contains a single insect, which 

 undergoes all its changes within the gall, and eats it way out 

 when it has attained the perfect form. Occasionally two galls 

 become fused together, and in my collection there is a very 

 curious example of these twin galls. They form a figure like 

 that of a rude hour-glass, and each portion has contained an 

 insect. The inhabitant of one portion has eaten its way out 

 and escaped, but the other has met with a singular fate. By 

 some untoward error, it has taken a wrong direction, and instead 

 of issuing into the world in the ordinary way, has hit upon the 

 neck which connects the two galls, so that, instead of merely 

 piercing half the diameter of the gall, it would have been forced 

 to gnaw a passage equal to thtee half diameters. 



Natural powers are always adjusted to the work which their 

 possessors have to perform. The insect was gifted with the 

 capability of eating her way through the walls of her own habi- 

 tation, but not with the power of making a passage through 



