I received this pretty creature by an accident from Scotland : the 

 Duke of Athol found, this Autumn, in an oak-wood near Dunkeld, a 

 Whortleberry-Shrub with white fruit : a thing not known before in 

 Britain. His Grace did me the honour to fend me fome growing 

 Plants of this fmall Shrub, for the garden of her Royal Highnefs 

 the Princefs Dowager of Wales at Kew ; and upon one of them 

 came feveral of thefe Flies wrap'd up alive. 



It feems the Tenthredo Sylvatica of the Syftema Nature of Lin- 

 naeus. 



The Fly is Female, that is here defcrib'd ; the Male has no Saw, 

 for he has no ufe for it. Nature has given that inftrument to the Fe- 

 male, to cut a way into a growing Vegetable ; and there to lodge 

 the eggs : which pafs through the hollow made by the two fides or 

 plates of the Saw. 



The Male has in the fame place, a kind of Forceps, or Pincers, 

 which he can thruft out, and with them feize the Female. 

 Thus in larger animals, where the Female has teats for fuck, the 

 Male has a refemblance of them for conformity. 



When the Female lays her eggs, there goes with them an acid 

 mucilaginous juice, which perverts the courfe of the Sap in the 

 Plant, and makes it grow into a kind of gall : this operates as foon 

 as it is iffu'd, and cicatrizes the part the Saw had wounded. 



One may fee bubbles of this juice always left upon the Plant ; 

 it is foft and clammy : the wound is oblong, and crooked, and the 

 part becomes black as if burnt : the egg increafes in bignefs to twice 

 or more than that, after it is lodg'd in the Plant; nor Is this ftrange 

 fince it has no hard covering:. 



a 



