302 
STRANGE DWELLINGS. 
The resemblance to a veritable fruit is much closer at the 
beginning of the season than in the autumn, as a number of 
small leaf-like projections surround its base, just as if they were 
a half- withered calyx. These, however, fall off as the summer 
advances, and are no more seen. 
If the oak-apple be cut with a knife, the first touch of the 
steel betrays a marked difference between its substance and 
that of the cherry-gall. Its texture is neither so firm nor so 
juicy, but is of a softer, drier, and more woolly character. More- 
over, the knife passes through several resisting substances, 
which, when the gall is quite severed, prove to be separate 
cells, each containing a grub. From each of these cells, which 
are extremely variable in number, a kind of fibre runs toward 
the base of the gall, and it is the opinion of some naturalists 
that these fibres are in fact the nervures of leaves which would 
have sprung from the bud in which the gall-fly has deposited 
her eggs, and which, in consequence of the irritating fluid in- j 
jected into the tree, are obliged to develop themselves in a 
new manner. 
To procure the insects of this and many other galls is no : 
very difficult task. The branch to which they adhere should 
be cut off, and placed in a bottle off water, and a piece of very 
fine gauze tied net-wise over it. The insects, although they 
can eat their way out of the gall in which they had been bred, 
never seem to think of subjecting the gauze to the same process, 
and therefore can be always secured. It is needful, however, ! 
to procure galls which are tolerably near their full age, as a 
branch can only be kept alive for a limited time, and if the 
supply of nourishment be cut off by the death of the branch, 
the enclosed insect becomes stunted, if not deformed. 
The galls produced by Cynips terminalis are those which are 
so greatly in request upon the twenty-ninth of May, and which, 
when covered with gold-leaf, are the standards under which the 
country boys are in the habit of levying contributions. A figure < 
of this gall is seen in the illustration. 
Some years ago, when 1 was calling at the office of the Field 
