STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
817 
OAK. LEAVES. 
is pale greenish yellow, with a black stripe along its middle, and the abdo¬ 
men is yellow, with the back black, and commonly with black bands upon 
its sides. 
The Wool-toft parasite, Eurytoma lanula, new speoics. 
This is black throughout, with only its feet white and their tips dusky, 
and the abdomen smooth and polished. It is 0.08 long. This is less com¬ 
mon than the preceding, and is obtained as frequently from galls on wil¬ 
lows, as from these wooly galls on oak leaves. 
317. Oak-apple gali.-flv, Callaspidia confluenta, Harris. 
Large smooth globular galls resembling apples, growing on the larger 
veins on the under side of the leaves of the red oak, each gall producing a 
large black gall-fly with deep tawny red legs, and its wings with a smoky 
brown spot margining the second vcinlet on its hind side, the female 
antennas with thirteen joints, her length 0.25. 
This is our largest kind of gall-fly. There are probably two generations 
of it annually, for early in June the galls are found upon the trees grown 
to their full size, which varies from an inch to an inch and three-quarters 
in diameter. Their attachment to the leaf is so slight and brittle that 
when the leaves are agitated with a strong wind numbers of them break off 
and fall, so that the ground under particular trees is copiously scattered 
with them, even when they are but half or two-tlnrds grown, the latter 
part of May. They then resemble large nice smooth gooseberries, being 
of a lively pale green color, freckled with large blackish or purplish brown 
dots, and clear and semi-transparent when held between the eye and the 
light, with an opake cloud-like spot in their center. Cut open, this central 
spot is seen to be a pale greenish yellow ball the size of a pea, with numer¬ 
ous white threads beautifully radiating from its surface to the outer wall, 
and holding this ball in its place in the otherwise vacant cavity. On cut¬ 
ting this ball asunder it is found to be very juicy and white internally, 
with a round cavity in its center, in which lies a small plump white maggot, 
curved into the shape of a crescent, and lying motionless and without any 
signs of life. The exterior wall is 0.05 thick, or about the thickness of 
the rind usually taken from an apple when it is peeled, and of a similar 
succulent juicy texture. 
These green immature galls, so smooth, plump and semi-transparent, 
have a most tempting appearance, as though they were some fine juicy 
fruit, of which the taste will be delicious. But though so tender and 
succulent they are perfectly tasteless, neither the outer rind nor the central 
ball having any perceptible flavor. But their luscious aspect, in connec¬ 
tion with their popular name of “ Oak apples,” excites the children in 
many neighborhoods all over our country, to gather and eat them, reject¬ 
ing the central core containing the worm. They are probably inert and 
destitute of any effect when thus eaten. Certainly they are not deleteri- 
[Ag. Trans.] 32 
