Kinsey: Gall Wasp Genus Cynips 27 
0.20), and there are species in which the wings are completely 
absent. 
If taxonomic classifications may be taken as an expression 
of an author’s conclusions on the evolutionary origins of his 
group, all previous workers have implied that the short- 
winged species represent genetic stocks separated from the 
long-winged species since the day that the first short-winged 
ancestor came into existence. The genera Acraspis, Philonix, 
Xanthoteras, Xystoteras, Biorhiza, Parateras , and others have 
been erected to receive the short- winged gall makers, and the 
long-winged species have been restricted to genera which con- 
tained nothing but long-winged species. It is the familiar 
story of evolution being conceivable as a function of the re- 
mote past, but unacceptable as a matter of moment in the 
affairs of the present. It is in essence implied that some great 
cataclysm once upon a time wrought one short-winged cynipid 
from which all the others have inherited, directly or thru 
more devious generic paths, all of their unusual character- 
istics. 
There are more than wings to justify these existent classi- 
fications. Many of the short-winged species have certain 
reductions of thoracic characters, enlarged abdomens, often 
fused abdominal segments, and several other structural pe- 
culiarities not recognized among any long-winged species. 
Thus, the typical Acraspis has a blunt hypopygial spine (figs. 
407-429) which is of uniform width for its whole length and 
terminated by a heavy tuft of hairs, and altho this structure 
occurs among all the other short-winged species which are 
Acraspis , this type of spine is not known in any long-winged 
cynipid. Similarly, the other short-winged genera have been 
based on groups of characters which would seem to establish 
their phylogenetic relationships. 
Our first doubts of the existent interpretations were aroused 
when we reached our study of Cynips clavuloides , a common 
species on the Valley white oak, Quercus lobata, in central 
California. The typically long-winged agamic female clavu- 
loides (fig. 164) develops in a leaf gall (fig. 142) which 
more or less resembles a minute Indian club in shape. The 
form is so distinctive that it naturally brought to mind the 
only very similar gall known at that time, Weld’s species, 
Xanthoteras teres. Our previous studies (Kinsey 1920-1923) 
