Insects. 1281 



The economy of this rare species is not known. Dufour informs us 

 that it has been captured in the environs of Saint Sever, frequenting 

 aquatic plants, particularly the flowers of Alisma Plantago, or common 

 Water-plantain. The female has not hitherto been captured in 

 this country. There is a specimen of the male in the collection of 

 British bees in the British Museum, having a label attached, giving 

 the locality of Leicester. The next specimen was captured by 

 Mr. Walton in the New Forest, and is now in the collection of Mr. 

 Desvignes ; and in July, 1842, Mr. Samuel Stevens captured another at 

 Weybridge, and I am indebted to that gentleman for the specimen 

 now in my collection. I have been induced to publish a figure of 

 each sex, in the hope that the insect may be recognised, should it fall 

 in the way of collectors not familiar with the order to which it belongs. 

 The figure of the female is drawn from a foreign specimen in the 

 cabinet of the British Museum. 



Frederick Smith. 



Oak Apples of America. — By the following description of the galls of North 

 America, extracted from Dr. Harris's ' Insects of Massachusetts,' it will be seen that 

 the oak-apples of that country are very different from those of Europe. " The eggs of 

 some gall-flies do not hatch till the galls begin to grow hard on the outside ; this is 

 the reason why we do not find any insects within certain kinds of galls, so long as they 

 remain soft and unripe. Of this description are the galls called swamp-apples and 

 cedar-apples. The former grow on the small twigs of the swamp-pink, or Azalea vis- 

 cosa ; they are irregular in shape, of a greenish white colour, and fleshy consistence, 

 like an apple, and are sometimes eaten, but are rather too astringent to be pleasant. 

 Cedar-apples are found on the twigs of the red cedar (Juniperus Virginiana) ; in their 

 unripe state they are large, irregular, and coarsely fringed lumps, of an orange colour, 

 and as soft as jelly ; they afterwards shrink, become hard and round, and the thick 

 fringe-like projections on their surface shorten, and take the appearance of leathery 

 prickles. They have been given as a medicine to expel worms ; and their efficacy, if 

 they really have any, probably depends upon the resin and oil peculiar to the tree 

 which gives to the galls, even when dried, somewhat of a turpentine smell. The 

 largest galls found in this country are commonly called oak-apples. They grow on 

 the leaves of the red-oak, are round and smooth, and measure from one inch and a 

 half to two inches in diameter. This kind of gall is green and somewhat pulpy 

 at first, but, when ripe, it consists of a thin and brittle shell, of a dirty drab colour, en- 

 closing a quantity of brown spongy matter, in the middle of which is a woody kernel 

 about as big as a pea. A single grub lives in the kernel, becomes a chrysalis in the 

 autumn, when the oak-apple falls from the tree, changes to a fly in the spring, and 

 makes its escape out of a small round hole which it gnaws through the kernel and 

 shell. This is probably the usual course, but I have known this gall-fly to come out 

 in October. The name of this insect is Cynips confluentus. Clusters of three or four 



iv 4 u 



