INTRODUCTION XVil 
Galls, often very large at the roots or on the trunk 
near the ground. 
“ How wonderfully observant Sir Thomas Browne 
must have been to distinguish the various galls, etc., 
and to point them out so distinctly —E. N. B.” 
The second reference is : 
“Letter No. 5. Dr. Browne to Merrett (Dr. 
Christopher Merrett), . . . . 
“TI made enumeration of the excretions of the oake 
which might bee obserued in england because I con- 
ceived they would bee most obseruable if you set them 
down together, not minding whether there were any 
addition by excrementum fungosum vermiculis scatens 
_ I only meant an vsuall excretion, soft and fungous at 
first and pale and sometimes cowered in part with a 
fresh red growing close vnto the sprouts, first full of 
maggots in little woodden cells which afterwards 
turne into little reddish browne or bay flies. of 
the tubera indica vermiculis scatentia I send you 
a peece, they are as bigg as good Tennis-balls and 
ligneous.” 
The Oak-apple and the Truffle-gall are the kinds 
here referred to. 
It was not until Withering’s ‘ British Plants’ was 
published (1776-1796), that galls were again definitely 
treated of. In Edition 8, vol. ii, p. 388, it is stated 
that “the balls or galls upon the leaves are occasioned 
by a small insect with four wings.” It would appear 
from this that the galls of Spathegaster bacearum and 
others were well known to botanists, and the cause of 
their origin understood. 
In ‘The Entomologist’ for the years 1874-1878 
there appeared a translation from Dr. G. L. Mayr’s 
‘Die Mitteleuropaischen Hichengallen,’ with numerous 
wood-cuts of the galls. Francis Walker, E. A. Fitch, 
and others, added notes as to the occurrence or other- 
wise of the species in Britain, and a most valuable 
compilation was thus made of the knowledge of those 
days. 
y b 
