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petioli, Linn.) in this country, though previously noticed by Mr. Westwood. But 

 surely it must have been of rare occurrence in this country until of late years, or it 

 would have been observed before ; and even now I believe it is confined to the southern 

 counties of England. At all events I have never seen it in the midland counties, or 

 indeed north of Somersetshire, and I should much wish to know if any one has hitherto 

 seen this gall-nut further inland than I have mentioned. This may be important to 

 know, as I believe the range of the gall-nut is extending, and with obvious injury to 

 young oak plantations, so that the gall-fly that produces the nut is becoming an 

 absolute pest in- Devonshire and Somersetshire, and I am led to inquire if anything 

 can be done to arrest its progress. It is very different from the innocuous soft galls 

 upon the leaves, seldom very numerous, and dropping off with the foliage in the 

 autumn. But these gall-nuts of C. Quercus-petioli are mostly persistent upon the 

 tree, and continue there for a long time hard as bullets. They seize upon the young 

 shoots of the year, often the leading shoot in young trees, and cluster at its termina- 

 tion, thus stopping the expansion of the buds by taking up their nutriment, and 

 keeping the trees in a dwarf state. I have now before me young shoots that are 

 terminated by eight or nine of these hard brown galls clustered together; and I 

 recently noticed in the oak plantations on Worle Hill, near Weston-super-Mare, that 

 many young oaks had been quite ruined by their leading shoots being thus loaded, 

 and some were absolutely dead. Now I have reason to believe that this attack upon 

 the oaks, at least in this plantation, is of recent origin. Four years ago I first 

 observed a few on two or three trees, and looked upon them as a curiosity ; last year 

 I was surprised to observe many more, and the present autumn, in walking through 

 one portion of the plantations only,. and without going out of the path, I counted 

 91 trees that were more or less subjected to this scourge — for thus it has become. 

 Some, it is true, had only about a score of galls or so upon them, but many had 

 hundreds clustered upon their branches thick as grapes, and the smaller trees were 

 evidently drooping and checked in their growth by the absorbing villainous galls. 

 Some of the trees were actually withered and dead, and others had their leading 

 shoots killed, with the evident cause burdened upon them. It is clear to me that 

 fresh trees are attacked every year by the increasing insect that produces the galls, 

 and what can be done to stay their assaults? Though I only counted 91 trees in the 

 Worle Hill plantations, I dare say I could have doubled this number by going 

 deeper within the coppice; but say that only these 91 oaks had 50 gall-nuts on a 

 tree — although many had hundreds of them — that only would give more than 4500 of 

 the Cynips to commence the next season with, so that next year instead of only 

 91 trees attacked I may expect to find thousands, on every tree perhaps throughout 

 the plantations. The mischief is that the oaks are certainly rendered barren by these 

 hard gall-nuts, and wherever they occurred on the larger trees there were no acorns at 

 all produced. It has been suggested that these gall-nuts may be used in the manu- 

 facture of ink, but I should doubt to such a profitable extent as to keep the oaks 

 entirely for that purpose; and if not it is but a poor consolation to have ink produced 

 only to record the destruction of plantations made and kept up at some expense in the 

 hope of good timber being some day ripe for sale. Can any suggestion, then, be made 

 upon the subject now, before the Cynipidal hordes have spread to all the oak trees in 

 the country, whether of Qucrcus robur or Q. sessiliflora? — Si/lvanus, St. Johns, near 

 Worcester.^' 



