Entomological Society. 4969 



M* Westwood remarked, that whereas authors had given the number of antennae 

 in the prawn as four, Mr. Newman had doubled it, and to arrive at this conclusion he 

 must have taken the threefold branches of two of them as distinct organs. 



Mr. Lubbock, in continuation, said that, on this hypothesis, the number of legs 

 should be quoted as twenty instead of ten. 



Read also two papers by Mr. Newman : — 



* Description of two New Species of Thrips.' — Specimens of these insects were taken 

 in a jungle near Mysore, on the leaves of a species of Anacardium, by Major Hamilton, 

 and were sent by that gentleman inclosed in a letter to the Secretary. 



* Descriptions of some Australian Lepidoptera.' — In this paper the author has 

 described fifteen new species of Lepidoptera, taken by Mr. Oxley on the Mount 

 Alexander range, in the colony of Victoria. 



Note on Oak-galls. 

 Mr. Westwood read the following extract from the * Gardener's Chronicle ' of 

 December 1st: — 



" I believe that it was only last year that the attention of the Entomological 

 Society of London was called to the existence of the hard oak-gall ( Cynips Quercus- 

 petioli, Linn.) in this country, though previously noticed by Mr. Westwood. But 

 surely it must have been of rare occurrence in this country until of late years, or it 

 would have been observed before ; and even now I believe it is confined to the southern 

 counties of England. At all events I have never seen it in the midland counties, or 

 indeed north of Somersetshire, and I should much wish to know if any one has hitherto 

 seen this gall-nut further inland than I have mentioned. Tbis may be important to 

 know, as I believe the range of the gall-nut is extending, and with obvious injury to 

 young oak plantations, so that the gall-fly that produces the nut is becoming an 

 absolute pest in Devonshire and Somersetshire, and I* am led to inquire if anything 

 can be done to arrest its progress. It is very different from the innocuous soft galls 

 upon the leaves, seldom very numerous, and dropping off with the foliage in the 

 autumn. But these gall-nuts of C. Quercus-petioli are mostly persistent upon the 

 tree, and continue there for a long time hard as bullets. They seize upon the young 

 shoots of the year, often the leading shoot in young trees, and cluster at its termina- 

 tion, thus stopping the expansion of the buds by taking up their nutriment, and 

 keeping the trees in a dwarf state. I have now before me young shoots that are 

 terminated by eight or nine of these hard brown galls clustered together; and I 

 recently noticed in the oak plantations on Worle Hill, near Weston-super-Mare, that 

 many young oaks had been quite ruined by their leading shoots being thus loaded, 

 and some were absolutely dead. Now I have reason to believe that this -attack upon 

 the oaks, at least in this plantation, is of recent origin. Four years ago I first 

 observed a few on two or three trees, and looked upon them as a curiosity ; last year 

 I was surprised to observe many more, and the present autumn, in walking through 

 one portion of the plantations only, and without going out of the path, I counted 

 91 trees that were more or less subjected to this scourge— for thus it has become. 

 Some, it is true, had only about a score of galls or so upon them, but many had 

 hundreds clustered upon their branches thick as grapes, and the smaller trees were 

 evidently drooping and checked in their growth by the absorbing villainous galls. 

 Some of the trees were actually withered and dead, and others had their leading 

 XIV, G 



