3i° 
STRANGE DWELLINGS . 
cell is larger than that of many cynipidae. Within the cell, no 
insect is discovered, but in its place a little spherical object, 
about as large as a No. 5 shot, which is very hard, and rolls 
about freely in the interior. If this be opened, the larva is found 
within it, reminding the adept in fairy lore of the white cat 
whose gifts were enclosed in a succession of nuts, each within 
the other. How these singular little cellules are made is not 
known, though their discoverer expended great trouble and 
patience upon them. 
The same naturalist mentions another species of gall, also 
found upon the oak in Carolina. It is spherical, covered with 
prickles like a thistle, and beset with a thick downy covering of 
rather long hair. Many other galls possess these characteristics, 
but the most curious point connected with this species is, that 
the hairs are as mobile as those of the sensitive plant, and as 
soon as they are touched, sink down, and never afterwards regain 
their former position. 
The size of a gall is no criterion of the dimensions or numbers 
of the insect which made it. Even in the galls which infest the 
oak, the smallest galls often furnish the largest insects, and in 
some specimens brought from Greece, the gall is as large as an 
ordinary black-currant, while the cell would contain a red- 
currant, showing that the inhabitant of the cell must be a large 
one in order to fill it. Again, although the oak-apple and rose- 
bedeguar do contain a great number of insects, there are many 
, examples where galls scarcely so large as a pea contain from ten 
to fifteen insects, while the ink-gall and the large Hungarian 
gall are inhabited by a single insect. 
One of the most curious problems is, to my mind, that of the 
brilliant colours with which many of these galls are decorated. 
That the rose-bedeguar should be so beautifully adorned with 
scarlet and green is a fact which does not seem to excite any 
astonishment, inasmuch as it may be said that the colours which 
ought to have been developed in the petals and the leaves have 
been diverted from their proper course, and forced to exhibit 
themselves in the gall. 
