2 BRITISH GALLS 



book on husbandry called the " Country Farme " (1616) 

 gravely inform the reader that " he shall know a fruitfuU 

 and fertile yeare if he see the Oke-apples, commonly called 

 Gals." A curious superstition of Gerard's day in connexion 

 with morbid growths on trees survives to this day in some 

 parts of South- West Surrey, where old people still carry a 

 little woody tumour from the trunk of an Oak or other 

 tree as a safeguard against cramp. These cramp-balls, 

 "crambles" in the vernacular, are of common occurrence 

 on Oak, Beech, and Holly trunks, and usually vary in size 

 from that of a marble to that of a walnut. A cramp-ball now 

 in the Haslemere Museum had been carried fifteen years 

 by an old man still living in Haslemere. 



Apparently John Evelyn the Diarist was acquainted only 

 with commercial galls, for he remarked in his " Sylva " 

 (1664) : " PUny affirms. That the Galls break out all together 

 in one Night, about the Beginning of June, and arrive to 

 their full Growth in one Day, this I should recommend to 

 the experience of some extraordinary vigilant Woodman, 

 had we any of our Oahs that produced them, Italy and Spain 

 being the nearest that do. Galls are of several kinds, but 

 grow upon a different Species of Rohur from any of ours, 

 which never arrive to any maturity." 



That keen observer Sir Thomas Browne noted, however, 

 that the Oak produced several kinds of galls. Writing to 

 his friend Dr. Merrett in 1668, he remarked: " A paragraph 

 might probably be annexed unto Quercus. Though wee 

 have not all the exotic oakes nor their excretions, yet these 

 and probably more supercrescences productions or excretions 

 may bee observed in England." He proceeded to give a 

 descriptive list of those which had come under his notice ; 

 some of them can be easily identified. 



It is said that Dr. Martin Lister (1638-1712), the 

 physician-in-ordinary to Queen Anne, was the first to 

 observe that certain insects are always associated with 

 certain galls. He found gall insects on the Plum, Cherry, 

 Vine, etc., and alluded to them as the patellae of these trees. 



