INTRODUCTION 3 



In 1 67 1 he discovered that from some a permanent dye of a 

 carnation-red colour could be obtained by mixing them with 

 ley of ashes. 



The physician Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) was the 

 earliest systematic writer on galls. He published in 1686 

 a treatise, " De Gallis," concerning the galls of Italy and 

 Sicily. His disciple was Dr. Derham, Canon of Windsor, 

 who comments upon Malpighi's observations and his own 

 in the notes to his Boyle Lectures (1711-12), in which he 

 writes : " I find Italy and Sicily more luxuriant in such 

 productions than England, at least than the parts about 

 Upminster (where I live) are. For many, if not most, of 

 the galls about us are taken notice of by him [Malpighi], 

 and several others besides that I have never met with, 

 although I have for many years as critically observed all 

 the excrescences and other morbid tumours of vegetables 

 as is almost possible, and do believe that few of them have 

 escaped me." Derham was fully aware that galls may 

 contain parasites, and quaintly remarks : " I apprehend we 

 see many vermicules, towards the outside of many oak- 

 apples, which I guess were not what the primitive insects 

 laid up in the germ from which the oak-apple had its rise, 

 but from some supervenient additional insects, laid in after 

 the apple was grown, and whilst it was tender and soft." 



That much attention was given to the subject by investi- 

 gators in the latter part of the eighteenth century and early 

 in the nineteenth is evident from a perusal of the article on 

 "Galls" in the fifteenth volume of Rees's "Cyclopaedia," 

 published in iSig. The author observes that galls are 

 morbid excrescences originating from those parts of a plant 

 that are in most vigorous growth, in consequence of the 

 attacks of insects; that the two varieties of British Oak 

 bear several kinds of galls ; and that the main stems of the 

 large shrubby kinds of Hawkweed (Hieracium sabaudum 

 and H. umhellatum) are often attacked and swell into oval 

 knots, in which, while growing, young insects may be found 

 latent. 



