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Indiana University Studies 
flesh pink or pinkish brown in color; up to 7.0 mm., dried galls averag- 
ing about 4.0 mm. in diameter. The thin outer shell re-enforced with 
a more or less thin, solid mass of crystalline structure; the larval cell 
highly variable in size, often occupying most of the gall, the wall of the 
cell hardly differentiated from the solid, crystalline material. Attached 
to the veins, singly or in small clusters, on the upper or (less often) 
the under surfaces of leaves of white oaks of all groups. 
RANGE. — Known from southern New York to Michigan, Florida, 
Texas, and northern New Mexico. Probably everywhere in this area; 
most common in the southeastern quarter of the United States. Figures 
50, 51-56. 
This species is represented by 11 described varieties with 
evidence of several others in the United States. The species 
is largely confined to the southern half of the country east of 
the Rockies. It is not an uncommon cynipid in that area, but 
north of the Mason and Dixon’s line it is rare. I have never- 
theless found stray galls among collections of the similar galls 
of Cynips fulvicollis at localities northward into Michigan. 
Altho I do not have insects enough to warrant descriptions of 
this northern material, we may anticipate the extension of 
the familiar range of mellea some day. 
In the Southwest, Cynips arida and other undescribed forms 
from New Mexico and Arizona constitute a group so closely 
related to the present species that it would not have been too 
misleading to have considered them as varieties of mellea . 
The galls of mellea are not parasitized as often as those of 
most Cynips, and a high percentage of success may attend the 
breeding of the species. The galls, however, usually prove 
too young to breed if they are gathered before the first or 
middle of October, and by that time most of them are fallen 
from the leaves to the ground where they are difficult to locate. 
The adults are mature in the galls late in the fall (which 
further evidences their Cynips affinities) and there is the usual 
winter emergence typical of Cynips. Many of the insects of 
mellea, however, delay emergence until March or even later in 
the spring. The alternate, bisexual generation is unknown. 
All of the varieties of the present species (except bifurca) 
are isolated geographically. The several hosts on which the 
species occurs have had little to do with the development of 
host varieties, altho Q. minima, in Florida, has isolated variety 
concolor, and Q. alba thruout a Central Georgia-Tennessee Val- 
ley area isolates variety albicolens. Each of the other varie- 
ties occurs on several oaks, sometimes on as diverse oaks as 
