OAK-APPLES. 109 
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 stunted, if not 
deformed. 
The galls produced by Cynips 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 country boys are in the 
habit of levying contributions. A figure of this gall is 
seen in the illustration. 
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 number 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 
corner of the illustration, the figures being necessarily 
much reduced. 
I was totally unacquainted with them, but, in the follow- 
ing 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, 
