OAK APPLES. 505 



If the oak apple be cut with a knife, the first touch of the steel 

 betrays a marked difference between its substance and that of the 

 cherry gall. Its texture is neither so firm nor so juicy, but. is of a 

 softer, drier, and more woolly character. Moreover, the knife 

 passes through several resisting substances, which, when the gall 

 is quite severed, prove to be separate cells, each containing a grub. 

 From each of these cells, which are es^ctremely variable in num- 

 ber, a kind of fibre runs toward the base of the gall, and it is the 

 opinion of some naturalists that these fibres are in fact the ner- 

 vures of leaves which would have sprung from the bud in which 

 the gall-fly has deposited her eggs, and which, in consequence of 

 the irritating fluid injected into the tree, are obliged to develop 

 themselves in a new manner. 



To procure the insects of this and many other galls is 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 procure 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 inclosed 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 

 aippearance in the country, and no one knew any thing about; 

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

 hand upper corner of the illustration, the figures being necessari- 

 ly much reduced. 



I was totally unacquainted with them, but in the following 

 year found m^ny of them on Shooter's Hill, in Kent, where the 



