STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
813 
OAK. LIMBS. 
into the wood beneath the bark, it would appear, for a little discolored 
spongy spot runs inward from each gall to the pith of the limb. The 
wounds of the bark from these punctures become so entirely healed 
that no indications of them can be detected with a magnifying glass. But 
a little smooth round swelling or elevation of the bark soon commences 
above each egg, which swelling increases, until at length the bark bursts 
and a small round granule, the size of a pin’s head, protrudes from the 
opening. These grow more and more, resembling a cluster of grapes when 
they have attained half their size and are beginning to crowd one against 
another. They finally attain from a quarter to a half inch in diameter. 
Their outer surface is covered with fine short hairs, which become rubbed 
olf from their more exposed parts. The worm lies in a small oval cavity 
at the base of each gall, the walls of this cavity being whitish, tough and 
leathery, resembling a small seed, from the outer surface of which numerous 
crinkled, brittle, wooly fibers of a rusty yellow color radiate to the outer 
envelope of the gall, which is a thin paper-like membrane, soft and flexible 
when moist but brittle and breaking from a slight pressure when dried. 
Most of these galls are found perforated in the winter season, when they 
and all other excresenees are more particularly noticed, the foil of the 
leaves then exposing them to view ; but particular clusters will at that 
season be discovered with the insects still remaining in them, to come forth 
the following June. There hence appears to be two broods of this fly 
annually, one having come from the perforated galls the preceding summer, 
whose eggs have produced tho unperforated galls in which the insects 
repose during the winter. 
The fly from these galls is very similar to that of the Oak tumor, differ¬ 
ing from that species only in being slightly larger, with its abdoineu paler 
beneath, and in having more joints in its antennae. 
315. Wool-sower gall-fly, Cynips seminator, Harris. 
A round mass resembling wool, from the size of a walnut to that of a 
goose egg, growing on the side of or surrounding white oak twigs, in June 
of a pure white color or tinged or speckled with rose red, and in autumn 
the color of sponge; producing small shining black gall-flies with bright 
tawny yellow legs and antennae and in the female the head and thorax cin¬ 
namon red ; their antennae of fifteen and fourteen joints, length 0.08 and 
the females 0.11. 
These galls first show themselves on the thriftiest young succulent 
shoots in the month of June, and they then resemble a lock of fine soft 
wool ot a pure white color or with a delicate rose red tinge upon one side, 
or sometimes they are clean white with numerous elevated points of deep 
rose red, and arc then truly beautiful in their appearance. From these 
galls I have obtained the flies the fore part of July. These flics imme¬ 
diately sow their eggs for another crop, and the oak twigs having now 
become harder and more woody, the galls growing on them are of a coarser 
