OAK-APPLES. 
303 
! newspaper, then recently started in its race for popularity, I was 
shown some oak-branches containing a vast number of hard, 
woody, spherical galls, and asked if I could tell the name of the 
I insect which had produced them. They had recently made 
their appearance in the country, and no one knew anything 
about them. A branch beset with these galls is shown in the 
; right hand upper corner of the illustration, the figures being 
necessarily much reduced. 
I was totally unacquainted with them, but, in the following 
year, found many of them on Shooter’s Hill, in Kent, where 
the growth of oaks is very dense. At the present day they have 
increased so rapidly that they outnumber almost every species, 
if we except the tiny spangle-galls; and I have bred great quan- 
tities of the insect. The creature which made them is named 
Cynips ILollari, in honour of the celebrated entomologist, and 
is plentiful on the Continent. I believe that it has long been 
known in Devonshire, though in Kent it has only recently made 
its appearance. 
The galls produced by this insect are wonderfully spherical, 
of a brown colour, smooth on the exterior, and about as large 
as white-heart cherries. Each contains a single insect, which 
undergoes all its changes within the gall, and eats it way out 
when it has attained the perfect form. Occasionally two galls 
become fused together, and in my collection there is a very 
curious example of these twin galls. They form a figure like 
that of a rude hour-glass, and each portion has contained an 
insect. The- inhabitant of one portion has eaten its way out 
and escaped, but the other has met with a singular fate. By 
some untoward error, it has taken a wrong direction, and instead 
of issuing into the world in the ordinary way, has hit upon the 
neck which connects the two galls, so that, instead of merely 
piercing half the diameter of the gall, it would have been forced 
to gnaw a passage equal to three half diameters. 
Natural powers are always adjusted to the work which their 
possessors have to perform. The insect was gifted with the 
capability of eating her way through the walls of her own habi- 
tation, but not with the power of making a passage through 
