76 A TOUE ROUND MY GARDEN. 



opened to ascertain what the disease could be which had 

 baffled the efforts of all his physicians, and the insect was 

 found, but amazingly enlarged. 



Whilst allowing my eyes to wander amidst the leaves of 

 the oak, I perceive singular fruits and very strange flowers. 

 There are little green apples marked with a rosy tinge on one 

 side, like the red-streak apple. There are upon other leaves 

 little red berries. These fruits have an insect for kernel, the 

 seed of these flowers are the eggs of insects. They are 

 dwellings produced upon the leaves by the puncture of little 

 flies which lay their eggs in the interior of the leaf. This 

 puncture produces the same efieots upon the leaf as the sting 

 of certain insects produces upon us; the leaf becomes in- 

 flamed, swells in a round form, and produces a ball, in which 

 the little worm which comes from the egg, and which is to 

 become a fly, grows and feeds up to the moment of its trans- 

 formation. Other flies also sometimes come to lay in the inte- 

 rior of these galls, as these excrescences are called, after they 

 are formed, although their offspring do not feed upon the leaves 

 of the oak. So far from that, they will become carnivorous 

 flies J and it is the first inhabitant, the one for whom the 

 retreat was created, which will serve them for food. After 

 having eaten it, they inherit the house, are then transformed 

 into real flies, as the proprietor would have been, pierce the 

 gall, and go to seek females who, like themselves, have been 

 laid in other galls, have eaten the inhabitants of them, and 

 seek a male in the plains of air. 



Almost all plants give birth to difierent galls, in which 

 various insects grow, and are transformed, eat or are eaten. 

 Upon the leaves of the viburnum arise galls, from which 

 issues a little beetle of a cinnamon colour. The red-tinted 

 galls of the leaves of the willow contain a sort of caterpillar, 

 which escapes from them at a certain moment, because it is 

 not in the gall that it is to be transformed ; it -will bury itself 

 in the earth, until it issues from its shell in the form of a 

 four-winged fly. The wild rose has sometimes a gall covered 

 with a sort of reddish-green hair, of a very singular ap- 

 pearance. If we keep some of these galls shut up, we shall 

 see flies of three or four difierent species issue from them. 

 We must not, however, believe that they have rights, if equal, 



