1202 The Zoologist — May, 1868. 



of growth. When dried these blisters look like flattened oak-spangles, 

 or like the fungus so commonly met with on bramble-leaves : this 

 resemblance is evidently a powerful means of protection against pre- 

 datory insects or birds. All these galls present an orifice on the under- 

 side of the leaf. One I found tenanted by a living Thrips, and this is 

 the only insect I have seen in these galls as yet. Prof. Westwood 

 ('Introduction to Modern Classification,' vol. ii. p. 4) mentions of 

 Thrips that "The leaves upon which they reside [are] marked all over 

 with small decayed patches." This is exactly what these blisters on 

 Celtis look like, but they are undoubtedly mines. Mr. Stainton lias 

 favoured me wkh the following opinion on the same production : — 

 "The mines, or rather minute galls, are probably the work of a minute 

 hymenopterou." To me their originator is still a puzzle; the leaves 

 containing them were gathered by my friend Mr. Charles Schaffher, 

 in August, 1867, near Iiadolfszell, on the Lake of Constance. The 

 plant grows throughout the South of Europe. 



Cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos). — "A correspondent mentions 

 finding a gall-like formation on the cranberry, but I have not yet been 

 able to get a specimen." — W. A. in lilt. April 9, 1867. This would 

 be a novelty : can any observer send it to mo ? Possibly the dwarf- 

 willow gall, mentioned further on, has been mistaken for this pro- 

 duction. 



Elder (Sambucus nigra). — Woody excrescences on the root, some- 

 times of the shape of a cauliflower, brown, individual sprouts more or 

 less regularly digitate or palmate. Size varying from that of a grain 

 of wheat to that of a walnut. " In some places they are pretty 

 abundant, though, from being just under ground, except where the 

 upper soil gets washed off by rains or the side when near streams, 

 they are seldom observed. They do not appear to have any insect- 

 life connected with them, and may after all prove to be something 

 cryptogamous, but they want observing at different seasons." — W. A. 

 in Hit. Through Mr. Armistead's kindness I have been enabled to 

 examine recent specimens in all stages of growth, and I concur in his 

 opinion that this production has no connexion with any insect what- 

 ever. I introduce the subject here in hopes that some obserrer may 

 succeed in tracing the true origin of this excrescence. 



Elm (Ulmus). — The large purse-like gall produced by Schizoneura(?) 

 Gallarum (Ulmi of De Geer), mostly on stunted elms, and formed of 

 the leaf itself, as is in some specimens plainly shown by the midrib of 

 the leaf still retaining its original position round the gall, has reached 



