820 
ANNUAL REPORT OF NEW YORK 
OAK. LEAVES. 
320. CniNQUAriN-oAK gall-fly, Figites Chinquapin , new species. 
Arising perpendicularly or obliquely from the upper surface of the leaves 
of the Chinquapin oak (Quercus Chinquapin), like pins inserted therein, 
little slender club-shaped galls nearly a half inch long, formed of a pale 
green elliptic head like a minute pod, tapering into a slender dull brown 
stalk twice as long as the head, the surface thinly clothed with fine short 
hairs ; producing a small black gall-fly with bright tawny yellow antennae 
and legs, its length 0.10. 
These singular little galls are met with in May, one or more growing 
upon the same leaf. The walls of the little pod at their summit arc 
exceedingly thin and the fly comes out through around hole which it gnaws 
near the upper end. It is remarkably large in comparison with the small 
delicate gall in which it is nurtured. Its antennae in the female, the only 
sex known to me, arc thirteen jointed, thicker towards their ends, and do 
not reach the base of the thorax. The second veinlet of its wings is angu¬ 
larly bent. Its seutel has a slight furrow in its middle and the suture, on 
each side of its base, is widened into a small roundish excavation. 
Oak spangles, perfectly the same as noticed by Westwood, Introduc¬ 
tion, vol. ii, p. 130, occur on the under surface of the white oak leaves in 
this country. These are small circular flat scales, less than a quarter of 
an inch in diameter, varying from a pale to a bright vivid rose red color, 
fading to dull red in autumn, and are attached to the leaf by a short 
slender footstalk. So much do they resemble a parasitic plant growing 
upon the leaf that they have been a subject of much controversy among 
writers. I have not as yet succeeded in obtaining the flies from them ; 
but they will no doubt yield a species different from that of Europe. For, 
it may have been observed, that several of the galls above described appear 
to be the same with some of those growing on the oaks of the old world, 
yet the insects coming from them arc manifestly different. 
3^1* Forest caterpillar, Clisiosarnpa silvatied, Harris. (Lepicloptcra. Bombycidco.) 
A caterpillar closely resembling that of the Apple-tree, §28, but at 
once distinguished from it by having a row of diamond-shaped or oval 
white spots along the middle of its back instead of a white stripe ; living in 
large societies, under a slight thinly-woven cobweb-like nest placed length¬ 
wise against the side of the tree, and coming out to feed upon the leaves ; 
when nearly grown dispersing themselves and wandering about; spinning 
a cocoon like that of the Apple-tree caterpillar, in which it lies twenty days, 
the moths appearing abroad the fore part of July, these being pale umber 
brown or cinnamon color, their fore wings gray and crossed by two narrow 
oblique bands, parallel with each other and with the hind margin, these 
bands dark brown instead of whitish as in the Apple-tree moth, and often 
obliterated by the whole space between them being dark brown; its width 
1.25 and the female 1.75. 
This caterpillar is particularly interesting from its close similarity in 
