486 HOMES WITHOUT HANDS. 



a couimon golden pippin or nonpareil apple, and therefore very 

 conspicuous upon the tree. It is coloured in the same manner 

 as the cherry-gall, but seldom so brilliantly, and the exterior is 

 not so smooth and polished. 



The resemblance to a veritable &uit is much closer at the 

 beginning of the season than in the autumn, as a number of 

 small leaf-like projection^ surroimd its base, just as if they were 

 a haK-withered calyx. These, however, fall off as the summer 

 advances, and are no more seen. 



If the oak-apple be cut with a knife, the first touch of the 

 steel betrays a marked difference between its substance and that 

 of the cheny-gaLL Its texture is neither so firm nor so juicy, 

 but is of a softer, drier, and more woolly character. Moreover, 

 the knife passes through several resisting substances, which, 

 when the gall is quite severed, prove to be separate cells, 

 each containing a grub. From each of these cells, which are 

 extremely variable in number, a kind of fibre runs toward 

 the base of the gall, and it is the opinion of some naturalists 

 that these fibres are in fact the nervures of leaves which would 

 have sprung from the bud in which the gall-fly has deposited 

 her eggs, and which, in consequence of the irritating fluid 

 injected into the tree, are obliged to develop themselves in a 

 new manner. 



To procure the insects of this and many other galls is no very 

 difficult task. The branch to which they adhere should be cut 

 off, and placed in a bottle of water, and a piece of very fine 

 gauze tied net-wise over it. The insects, although they can 

 eat their way out of the gall in which they have been bred, never 

 seem to think of subjecting the gauze to the same process, and 

 therefore can be always secured. It is needful, however, to pro- 

 cure galls which are tolerably near their full age, as a branch 

 can only be kept alive for a limited time, and if the supply of 

 nourishment be cut off by the death of the branch, the enclosed 

 insect becomes stimted, if not deformed. 



The galls produced by Cjmips terminalis are those which are 

 so greatly in request upon the twenty-ninth of May, and which, 

 when covered with gold-leaf, are the standards under which the 

 countiy boys are in the habit of levying contributions. A figure 

 of this gall is seen in the illustration. 



