HABITATIONS OV INSECTS. 419 



spring up and surround . the germe of her future de- 

 scendants. I allude to those vegetable excrescencies 

 termed galls, some of which resembling beautiful berries 

 and others apples, you must have frequently observed 

 on the leaves of the oak, and of which one species, the 

 Aleppo gall, as I have before noticed, is of such impor- 

 tance in the ingenious art " de peindre la parole et de 

 parler aux yeux." All these tumours owe their origin to 

 the deposition of an egg in the substance out of which 

 they grow. This egg, too small almost for perception, 

 the parent insect, a little four-winged fly, introduces into 

 a puncture made by her curious spiral sting, and in a 

 few hours it becomes surrounded with a fleshy chamber, 

 which not only serves its young for shelter and defence, 

 but also for food ; the future little hermit feeding upon 

 its interior and there undergoing its metamorphosis. 

 Nothing can be more varied than these habitations. 

 Some are of a globular form, a bright red colour, and 

 smooth fleshy consistence, resembling beautiful fruits, 

 for which indeed, as you have before been told, they are 

 eaten in the Levant : others, beset with spines or clothed 

 with hair, are so much like seed-vessels, that an eminent 

 modern chemist has contended respecting the Aleppo 

 gall, that it is actually a capsule 3 . Some are exactly 

 round ; others like little mushrooms ; others resemble 

 artichokes ; while others again might be taken for flow- 

 ers : in short, they are of a hundred different forms, and 



a Aikin's Dictionary of Chemistry, i. 455. What have probably 

 been taken by Mr. Aikin for " kernels," in the imperforated nuts, 

 are the cocoons of the inhabitants of these galls in the pupa state, 

 which often extremely resemble the seeds of a capsule, as Reaumur 

 (iii. 4.29.) has remarked, 



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