Kinsey: Gall Wasp Genus Gy nips 
183 
GALL OF AGAMIC FORMS. — Spherical to squash-shaped, hard 
and crystalline leaf galls, in most varieties bearing short and blunt 
projecting tips. Strictly or irregularly spherical, or a regular or ir- 
regular, inverted, truncate cone; up to 9.0 mm. in diameter, in most 
varieties bearing short, stout, often crooked and irregular, spiny pro- 
jections which are in length not half the diameter of the body of the 
gall; the surfaces of the galls naked or with a puberulence, whitish or 
light green or pinkish when young, soon becoming (in most varieties) 
rose violet to coral red in color; internally filled with a compact mass 
of crystalline material containing a very few branched fibers, the galls 
soft as rubber when moist, hard and brittle as glass when dry; a more 
or less complete cavity in the center of the gall below the larval cell 
and near the very base of the gall, this cavity with the larval cell 
making the gall appear, superficially, bi-thalamous ; the larval cell in- 
separable, embedded in the compact material of the gall or rarely 
(particularly in immature galls) held in place by fine, silky, radiating 
fibers; irregular in shape, up to 4.0 mm. in length, sometimes central 
in the gall, usually in the upper part of the gall directly under the 
epidermis, the cell centrally or asymmetrically placed, sometimes extend- 
ing in part into one of the spiny projections. The gall wholly separ- 
able, attached by a point to a vein, usually on the under surfaces, some- 
times on the upper surfaces of leaves of Pacific Coast white oaks, Quer- 
cus lobata , Q. douglasii , Q. dumosa, Q. turbinella, and Q. durata . 
GALL OF BISEXUAL FORMS. — Spherical, berry-like, very succu- 
lent, pale green and more or less translucent when fresh, bright red 
when very young; the surface smooth or, in some varieties, pebbled and 
indefinitely marked with low ridges which bear soft, projecting points. 
The galls 4 to 7 mm. in diameter, shrivelling greatly upon drying, then 
becoming blackened; when dried upon the twig they become more or 
less obconical in shape, remaining lighter straw-brown in color. The 
wall of the gall moderately thin, thinnest apically; entirely hollow in- 
side, without a distinct larval cell. Attached very insecurely by a 
single, slightly elongated point, on the twigs (bud galls) of probably 
all the oaks on which the agamic generation occurs; definitely known 
from only Quercus lobata, Q. Douglasii, and Q. durata. 
RANGE .—California, Shasta County to the Mexican border, prob- 
ably in Lower California. 
There are few cynipid galls more abundant than those pro- 
duced by the agamic forms of echinus in the autumn in Cali- 
fornia. These galls are confined to white oaks, and do not 
occur north of Shasta County. 
The bisexual forms of echinus , on the other hand, are known 
from hardly more than a half dozen recent collections, repre- 
senting, however, four of the six known varieties of the spe- 
cies. These bisexual galls are probably not rare, but they are 
