STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
809 
OAK. LIMBB. 
Linnaeus, in this group of insects, set us the example of bestowing names 
which express not merely the kind of tree but the particular part thereof, 
or the appearance of the gall from which the respective species are pro¬ 
duced (Cy flips Quercus baccarum , Oak berry gall-fly, C. Quercus ramuli , 
Oak twigs, etc.), and though such compound names are to be avoided as 
being inconveniently long, a departure from the general rule may well be 
permitted in this family, since hereby the names alone, in most instances, 
definitely indicate the species to which they refer, and these names also 
serve to diversify and relieve the science somewhat from that wearisome 
sameness and uniformity which pervades its nomenclature. 
Where any of these insects attack a valued tree which it is desired 
to preserve from their depredations, the remedy is obvious and simple. 
Before the galls which they produce are so far matured that the inclosed 
insects have perforated and escaped from them, they should be cut from 
the tree and burned. Fortunately, it is only small young trees that gall¬ 
flies are liable to destroy or greatly injure by their attacks. And their 
parasitic and other onemies restrain them from multiplying so that it is 
seldom they will require any interference from man. 
310 . Oak-tkee gall-fly, Cynips Qucrcus-arbot ?, new species. 
Swellings similar to those above described, growing on the tips of the 
limbs of aged and large white oak trees; producing a small black gall-fly 
having all its legs and antenna) of a bright pale yellow oolor, and one 
more joint in the latter organs than in the preceding species in the males, 
which sex is 0.06 in length, and to the tips of its wings 0.10. 
I have in repeated instances observed these swellings at the tips of the 
lofty limbs of mature and aged oaks, when the trees were felled and their 
limbs thus brought within view. But having until this moment supposed 
these galls the same with the preceding species, I have taken no care to 
obtain the flies from them. 
Lhe fact has heretofore been stated that where trees are standing apart, 
for furnishing a shade in pastures and other cleared lands, or as ornamen¬ 
tal trees in parks and pleasure-grounds, they gather more insects and are 
hence more stinted and deformed in their growth, than when they arc asso¬ 
ciated together in forests. A large solitary oak which formerly stood in 
prominent view from the door of my dwelling was noticed for many years 
as making no perceptible advance in height or in the size of its body and 
limbs, although apparently healthy and clothed luxuriantly each summer 
with foliage. One morning in March this tree was observed cut down, and 
on repairing to it, it was discovered that the extreme ends of all the more 
vigorous and thrifty limbs and twigs were swollen into knobs or galls, 
wherefrom these ends would perish and their onward growth be thus 
arrested, all the other more puny limbs showing on their ends dead and 
decaying knobs of the same kind, which had grown in preceding years, 
ihus it was evidently this small gall-fly, which, by killing the ends of all 
the most vigorous and thrifty shoots, year after year, had been retarding 
