OAK APPLES. 61 



be worth inquiring whether they have aught within deserv- 

 ing notice ; or whether, as with the merry monarch's self, they 

 are to be estimated only for their outward bravery. 



Pleasant to the taste these fair fruits are not (as well we 

 know by bitter experiences of childhood) ; so not daring to 

 bite, let us pull one of them asunder, or, dividing it with a 

 knife, reveal its secrets. "We now see, surrounded and bounded 

 by spongy pulp, a set of cells, each with its solitary living oc- 

 cupant, for whose safe keeping, and that of his fellows, this 

 fruit-like tenement was called into existence, not by the labours 

 of a trifling artificer, but by the touch of a flying fairy. The 

 insect tenants of these pulpy palaces are not unlike, in one 

 condition of their being, to the scions of royal houses. It is 

 not improbable that before one of them has attained to the 

 majority of its winged estate, all may be despoiled of their 

 inheritance by a host of usurping parasites, such as, in palaces 

 reared by hands, have often enacted a resembling part. 



The above description of a common oak-apple, its Gall-fly 

 occupant, and Ichneumon intruder, may seem over-fanciful ; 

 but in writing of Galls, our pen may possibly be carried from 

 the dry land of simple fact by some spirit of fiction in our ink, 

 an infusion, it is likely, of gall-nuts, the produce of the 

 East, the very region of romance. With graver pens than ours, 

 Fancies would seem, indeed, to have been the very growth of 

 Gall ; for, descanting on their origin, an Italian entomologist,* 



* Redi. 



YOL. II. 5. 



