OAK-APPLES. 487 



Some years ago, when I was calling at the office of the Field 

 newspaper, then recently started in its race for popularity, I was 

 shown some oak-branches containing a vast miinber of hard, 

 woody, spherical galls, and asked if I could tell the name of the 

 insect which had produced them. They had recently made their 

 appearance in the country, and no one knew anything about 

 them. A branch beset with these galls is shown in the right 

 hand upper comer of the illustration, the figures being neces- 

 sarily much reduced. 



I was totally unacquainted with them, but, in the following 

 year, found many of them on Shooter's Hill, in Kent, where the 

 growth of oaks is very dense. At the present day they have 

 increased so rapidly that they outnumber almost every species, 

 if we except the tiny spangle-galls, and I have bred great quan- 

 tities of the insect. The creature which made them is named 

 Cynips Kollari, in honour of the celebrated entomologist, and is 

 plentiful on the Continent. I believe that it has long been 

 known in Devonshire, though in Kent it has only recently made 

 its appearance. 



The galls produced by this insect are wonderfully spherical, 

 of a brown colour, smooth on the exterior, and about as large 

 as white-heart cherries. Each contains a single insect, which 

 undergoes all its changes within the gall, and eats its way out 

 when it has attained the perfect form. Occasionally two galls 

 become fused together, and in my collection there is a very 

 curious example of these twin galls. They form a figure like 

 that of a rude hour-glass, and each portion has contained an 

 insect. The inhabitant of one portion has eaten its way out and 

 escaped, but the other has met with a singular fate. By some 

 untoward error, it has taken a wrong direction, and instead of 

 issuing into the world in the ordinary way, has hit upon the 

 neck which connects the two galls, so that, instead of merely 

 piercing half the diameter of the gall, it would have been forced 

 to gnaw a passage equal to three half diameters. 



Natural powers are always adjusted to the work which their 

 possessors have to perform. The insect was gifted with the 

 capability of eating her way through the walls of her own 

 habitation, but not with the power of making a passage through 

 another g all afterwards. As a natural consequence, she has 

 died from exhaustion before she could emerge into the air ; and 



