DIRECT BENEFIT* DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 315 



No present that insects have made to the arts is equal 

 in utility and universal interest, comes more home to 

 our best affections, or is the instrument of producing 

 more valuable fruits of human wisdom and genius, than 

 the product of the animal to which I have just alluded. 

 You will readily conjecture I mean the fly that gives birth 

 to die gall-nut^ from which ink is made. — How infinitely 

 are we indebted to this little creature, which at once 

 enables us to converse with our absent friends and con- 

 nexions be their distance from us ever so great, and sup- 

 plies the means by which, to use the poet's language, 

 we can 



" give to airy nothing 



A local habitation and a name ! " 



enabling the poet, the philosopher, the politician, the 

 moralist, and the divine, to embody their thoughts for 

 the amusement, instruction, direction and reformation of 

 mankind. — The insect which produces the gall-nut is of 

 the genus Cynips of Linne, but was not known to him 

 or to Fabricius. Olivier first described it under the name 

 of Diplolepis gallce tinctorice*. The galls originate on 

 the leaves of a species of oak (Qiicrcus hifectoria, Oliv.) 

 very common throughout Asia Minor, in many parts of 

 which they are collected by the poorer inhabitants and 

 exported from Smyrna, Aleppo, and other ports in the 

 Levant, as well as from the East Indies, whither a part 

 of those collected are now carried. The galls most es- 

 teemed are those known in commerce under the name of 



a Encyclop. Insect, vi. 281. It had better, perhaps, as compound 

 Trivial Names are bad, be called Cynips Scriptoricm?. 



