1864.] 
457 
and successful way of breeding from “ oak-apples,’^ is to pin up several 
dozen in a newspaper. Placed in a glass jar, especially if very green, 
they are far more apt to mould and spoil, and the moisture that is con¬ 
tinually exhaling from them settles on the jar, even when dry sand is 
placed at the bottom, and wets the wings of the images as they appear. 
Moreover, when breeding on a large scale, the expense of providing a 
sufficient number of jars would be quite considerable. 
There is still another most interesting question connected with the 
Natural History of Gi/nips q. spongifica. Baron Osten Sacken bred a 
form allowed by him to be undistinguishable from it ( G. q. inanis) in 
June, from entirely different galls found either on quercus coccinea or on 
q. rubra, but which species is uncertain; but he succeeded in obtaining 
two 9 specimens only. In June, 1863, I obtained 2 S 9 9 ^^d some 
parasites from about 50 such galls, and I am certain that these galls 
occur near Rock Island exclusively on the red-oak (q. rubra), and as 
stated by Osten Sacken, on young trees and occasionally on mere sap¬ 
lings. The gall-fly described by Dr. Fitch as Gallaspidia confluenta 
Harris (iV. Y. Rep. II, § 317) and said to occur on the red-oak, is man¬ 
ifestly from the description of its gall identical with inanis 0. S ; but 
neither did Dr. Fitch succeed in obtaining the S sex. The insect 
however is evidently not a Gallaspidia, for that genus has the % anten¬ 
nae 14-jointed, not 15-jointed like inanis % , and the scutel “clathrate” 
or covered with raised network, and truncate behind, not rounded be¬ 
hind as in inanis. (Brulle Hi/menopt. IV, p. 635.) I can bear 
witness to the fact that both sexes of inanis are undistinguishable, ex¬ 
cept in the few unimportant particulars mentioned above, from % 9 
spongifica. Having about 30 of the galls remaining on hand imperfo¬ 
rated by any insect till the autumn, I had fully expected to obtain 
acicidata or some other dimorphous 9 typ® from them; but to my 
great mortification, on cutting them open in January, 1864, I disco¬ 
vered that 15 or 16 of them had been attacked by a small parasitic 
Chalcidide, 8 or 9 of the larvse of which were found clinging together 
in a round ball inside of the central cell, some of the others contained 
what was probably a dead larva of inanis., one a dead imago of inanis 
all mouldy, and the rest irrecognizable matter. Six I reserved un¬ 
touched, for the chance of breeding the Chalcididous imago. The failure 
to breed any dimorphous autumnal form from these galls may very pro- 
