THE BRITISH OAR. 
7 
in their turn have produced branches and leaves. Trees thus 
infested are crippled as though they had been subjected to con- 
stant pruning. 
As much of the natural history of the cynijos, by which these 
gall-nuts are formed, as is necessary for our purpose, may be 
gathered from a paper by Mr. Parfitt, who seems to have well 
studied the gall insect in Devon, its head quarters. We quote 
it from the Journal of the Bath and West of England Agricul- 
tural Society for 1861 : — 
The eggs deposited by the females in the oak buds in September remain 
there in a state of apparent quiescence till the following spring ; then as soon 
as the sap begins to flow, the irritant injected into the wound at the same 
time the egg was deposited, or possibly the combined action of the egg and 
irritant, causes the sap to diverge ; that portion of the bud which should have 
formed a young shoot, is converted into a spherical ball ; the outer scales of 
the bud fall away, and it is the woody secretion which entirely forms the gall. 
The cells in the gall are not elongated and regular, as in the young shoot, but 
confused and irregular ; and in the centre of each gall lies a young grub of 
the cynips, forming a living nucleus, around Avhich is deposited a thin hard 
woody envelope, much more compact in substance than the sponge-like tissue 
which fdls up the interstice between it and the shining outer coat of the gall. 
This compactness of structure is a necessary and all-wise provision of nature 
for protecting the delicate insect which lies within from destruction ; for if 
the gall were composed entirely of large spongy cells, the rapid flow of sap in 
the early spring would be more than the creature could consume, and it 
would consequently be drowned. I am aware that some naturalists incline 
to the opinion that the larvae of the cynips feed on the gall. From this view, 
however, I venture to dissent ; for not only is it inconsistent with the struc- 
ture of the creature’s mouth, and the position in which the young larvce are 
invariably found, with the head tucked under the apex of the abdomen, but 
if they fed on the substance or crude material of the gall, the undigested 
parts would certainly be found in the interior of its cell : in other words, the 
excrement would be there, for there is no outlet, and the lacteals or absorbent 
vessels of the gall could not take it up. I therefore think that the creature 
feeds entirely on the sap of the tree — an elaborate food fit for it without the 
need of mastication. This explains how it happens that the galls of com- 
merce, with the insects in them, are so much better and dearer than those 
from which the cynips has escaped ; in a word, the tannic acid is more 
abimdant. 
It has been before observed, that there are two broods of the insect in a 
season ; thus, those which do not emerge from the gall in September, remain 
on till the following April or May. This is a wise provision of nature for 
continuing the species, should anything befall the autumn brood ; and it is the 
more deserving of notice, because the gall-producing cynips has a deadly enemy 
which accompanies or follows it in its flight from bud to bud, and deposits an 
egg wherever it finds the egg of the cynips. Here, as soon as the cynips larva 
is hatched, the larva of the parasite is hatched also ; forthwith the latter pro- 
ceeds to eat a hole in the skin of the rightful occupant of the nidus, and the 
