224 
THE SUBSTITUTE. 
And those freaks of sportive nature, 
Called by children wild niossroses, 
Found in summer in the hedgerows, 
All these and a hundred others 
Quite as strange, and some far stranger. 
Are the work of puny insects. 
That we always call the gallflies. 
Or in Science Cynipsina. 
These most wonderful formations 
Nurseries of gallfly larvae. 
Little white and footless maggots. 
Are not built by skill instinctive 
Of the quiet penned-up inmate. 
Or its winged and wandering parent; 
But are merely strange distortions. 
Caused by buoyant sap diverted 
From the true and proper channels ; 
Yet how uniformly fashioned ! 
How alike in size and ligure 
Those each kind of fly produces ! 
How unlike to every other! 
All the gallflies are small insects. 
With antennae very simple. 
And with bodies flattened sideways. 
And divided in the middle 
Into nearly equal portions, 
Called the abdomen and thorax ; 
And the female has a borer — 
Almost all gallflies are female — 
With which instrument she pierces 
Leaves or tiny twiglike branches. 
Laying eggs within the fissure ; 
The clear wings are almost rayless. 
And her feet are all five-jointeel. 
Next to gallflies come ichneumons, 
Insect-parasites we call them. 
For the grubs or footless maggots. 
From which come the fly ichneumons. 
Live concealed within the bodies 
Of all other kinds of insects, 
But in caterpillars chiefly 
Of the butterflies and nightmoths : 
On the living flesh they fatten. 
When the time arrives for changing. 
When the butterfly should issue 
J'rom its still and death-like pupa, 
Then from out that shrouded coffin 
