The Zoologist— May, 1868. 1199 



observed in England, because I conceived they would be most ob- 

 servable if you set them down together, not minding whether there 

 were any addition by excrementum funyosum vermiculis sontens, I 

 only meant an usual excretion, soft and fungous at first and pale and 

 sometimes covered in part with a fresh red, growing close unto the 

 sprouts ; it is full of maggots in little wooden cells, which afterwards 

 turn into little reddish brown or bay flies. Of the Tubera indica ver- 

 miculis scateniia I send you a piece ; they are as big as good tennis- 

 balls and ligneous." * The first of the productions referred to in this 

 letter is perhaps the common oak-apple (Cynips terminalis,Fab.); 

 the modern name for the "Tubera indica" I should be glad to learn. 



" Bitter as gall" has long been a standing saying ; f to listen to truth 

 is sometimes more bitter still, but this is no valid reason for keeping 

 it in the back-ground, when the opportunity occurs of speaking it, and 

 so I hope that the following quaint logic will be borne in mind by 

 those literary craftsmen who stand in want of such a warning : — In a 

 story of the tenth century by Scheffel (vol. iii. p. 4), intituled ' Ekke- 

 hard,' this person asks, "How does it happen that so much that has 

 flown from ink cannot deny its origin ? " Answer : " Because all ink 

 comes from the gall-apple, and all gall-apples from evil wasps' 

 sting." 



A biographical notice of William Hall, alias " Antiquarian Hall," 

 &c. (who was born June 1, o. s. 1748, at Willow Booth, a small island 

 in the fens of Lincolnshire, near Heckington Ease, in the parish of 

 South Kyme, and who died at Lynn, in Norfolk, January 24, 1825), 

 contains the following interesting observation — I say interesting, 

 because full allowance must be made for the state of knowledge 

 extant at the time it was written : — "' No animation without genera- 

 tion' seems a standing axiom in philosophy, but upon tasting the 

 berry of a plant greatly resembling brooklime, but with a narrower 

 leaf, I found it attended with a loose fulsomeness, very different from 

 anything I had ever tasted ; and on splitting one of them with my nail, 

 out sprang a fluttering maggot, which put me upon miuute examina- 

 tion : the result of which was that every berry, according to its degree 

 of maturity, contained a proportionate maggot up to the full-ripe shell, 

 where a door was plainly discerned, and the insect had taken its flight. 

 I have ever since carefully inspected the herb, and the result is always 



* 'Posthumous Works of the learued Sir Thomas Browne, Kt., M.D., lale of 

 Norwich, &c.' London, 1712. 8vo. 



f I am, of course, aware that no vegetable " gall" is implied here. 



