1198 The Zoologist— May, 1868. 



a dozen fossil poplar-leaves (Populus laflor), the stalks of which were 

 distorted by Aphis galls, similar to those produced now-a-days by 

 Pemphigus on several poplars. The name given to this fossil plant- 

 louse is Pemphigus bursifex.* Professor Heer has also found small 

 semi-globular galls on a fossil poplar (not willow) leaf from Oeningen. 

 These are ascribed to a dipteron, named Cecidomyia Breinii, f as he 

 finds that the galls agree with those of the recent Cecidomyia 

 Salicis. X 



Leaving the faithful but (in this instance) scanty records of the book 

 of Nature, we come to annals of a more spurious kind, the quaint and 

 fanciful notions which originated in the human mind. Handed down 

 from generation to generation, these are now considered, not as always 

 affording trustworthy knowledge, but as curious heir-looms of the 

 brain-work of bygone times, when the light of Science was mostly 

 confined to the lanthorns of the cloister and the solitary flickering 

 lamp of the alchymist. No doubt the readers of the 'Zoologist' are 

 acquainted with the opinion entertained in the fourteenth and fol- 

 lowing centuries on the leaf-roses of the willow,§ so I may be allowed 

 to pass over this subject here, likewise the often-ventilated question of 

 the identity of the so-called "Dead-Sea apples" with galls, which 

 latter point has at various times been commented upon by writers 

 eager to substantiate the testimony of ancient writ. || But the following 

 early signs of gall-study in this country may not be generally known 

 to the entomological reader. On the 6th of February, 1658, Sir Thomas 

 Browne, of Norwich, wrote, in a letter to Mr. Dngdale, the following : — 

 "I made enumeration of the excretions of the oak, which might be 



* Heer, 'Insectenfauna, &c, von Oeningen, &c.,' t. iii. 1853, and ' Urwelt der 

 Schweiz, 1865, p. 389 (Rhynchota). 



f Heer, ' Unveil,' pp. 394, 395, fig. 



J I am indebted to the late Senator von Heyden for a copy of bis first notice on 

 fossil galls ; to Prof. Heer for kindly pointing out to me what fossil galls came under bis 

 notice; and to Dr. H. Hagen, formerly of Koenigsberg, now of Cambridge, Mass., 

 for a complete index to the fossil genera of gall-makers as far as known ; and I much 

 regret that, ou account of Mr. Armislead's death, these valuable materials will have to 

 be laid by for the present. 



§ See, for instance, Ed. Peacock's interesting letter in the 'Athenaeum' of 

 March 18, 1865; reprinted in the 'Zoologist' (Zool. 9554). 



|| Book of Wisdom, chap. x. 7. • Lambert, A. B., "Some Account of the Galls 

 found on a Species of Oak from the Shores of the Dead Sea "(Trans. Linn. Soc. 

 1837, t. 17, pp. 445—448, pi. 1). Elliot, W., " Account of the Poma Sodomitica," 

 &c. (Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. 1837, t. ii. pp. 14—18). 



