400 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



species of Cynips, called Cynips Psenes, and although the 

 soundness of this view has been disputed by a most distin- 

 guished traveller and observer, Hasselquist, and also by one 

 of our most learned entomologists, Olivier, still the pheno- 

 menon of caprification and its accelerations, through the 

 instrumentality of insects, are matters of current faith. It is 

 said that the Cynips is induced, by the earlier ripening of the 

 wild fig, Fie us terragena, to prefer these as a nidus for its 

 eggs, and that the larvse produced therefrom, having thus 

 become denizens of these figs, go through their metamor- 

 phoses earlier than they would have done in the cultivated 

 species, and when ready to emerge they become covered with 

 pollen, which they carry with them wherever they go. The 

 cultivators, taking advantage of this propensity, gather the 

 wild figs, and place them near the cultivated ones ; and the 

 pollen-covered insects have thus the opportunity of conveying 

 the fertilizing element to the latter. " Such is the account of 

 the process given by some authors; but Lindley ('Penny 

 Cyclop.' vi. 273), DeCandoUe ('Physiol. Veget.' p. 580), 

 Treviranus (in * Linnsea,' 1825, with figures of the insect), and 

 other vegetable physiologists, attribute the earlier ripening of 

 the otherwise later crop, and the opportunity thus afforded to 

 the fig-growers of the Levant of obtaining a double crop in 

 a season, to the well-known fact, that fruit bitten by insects 

 ripens sooner than others; the wound, and not the act of 

 impregnation, appearing to act as a stimulant to the local 

 action of the parenchyma." (' Westwood Introduction,' vol. ii. 

 165.) This brief but comprehensive summary of the opinion 

 of these learned naturalists, by removing one difficulty rather 

 tends to introduce another, for it assumes that the Cynipida;, 

 in their perfect state, are vegetable-feeders, an assumption 

 which the discoveries of Dr. Coquerel, as cited below by Mr. 

 Walker, seem to support. Mr. Walker places the strange 

 creatures, of which he has most obligingly lent me the 

 carefully-finished figures, in the family Agaonidae. This 

 family forms part of the section Chalcidiae, on which he is 

 issuing a work in small fasciculi, four of which have already 

 appeared. His observations on the Agaonidae are as follows : 

 — " The Agaonidae appear as yet chiefly in three different 

 aspects, and in three different regions. The first region is 

 the Mauritius, where they have been discovered by the 



