2 
BRITISH GALLS 
book on husbandry called the “ Country Farme ” (1616) 
gravely inform the reader that “ he shall know a fruitfull 
and fertile yeare if he see the Oke-apples, commonly called 
Gals.” A curious superstition of Gerard’s day in connexion 
with morbid growths on trees survives to this day in some 
parts of South-West Surrey, where old people still carry a 
little woody tumour from the trunk of an Oak or other 
tree as a safeguard against cramp. These cramp-balls, 
“crambles” in the vernacular, are of common occurrence 
on Oak, Beech, and Holly trunks, and usually vary in size 
from that of a marble to that of a walnut. A cramp-ball now 
in the Haslemere Museum had been carried fifteen years 
by an old man still living in Haslemere. 
Apparently John Evelyn the Diarist was acquainted only 
with commercial galls, for he remarked in his “ Sylva ” 
(1664): “ Pliny affirms, That the Galls break out all together 
in one Night, about the Beginning of June, and arrive to 
their full Growth in one Day, this I should recommend to 
the experience of some extraordinary vigilant Woodman, 
had we any of our Oaks that produced them, Italy and Spain 
being the nearest that do. Galls are of several kinds, but 
grow upon a different Species of Rohtv from any of ours, 
which never arrive to any maturity.” 
That keen observer Sir Thomas Browne noted, however, 
that the Oak produced several kinds of galls. Writing to 
his friend Dr. Merrett in 1668, he remarked: “ A paragraph 
might probably be annexed unto Quercus. Though wee 
have not all the exotic oakes nor their excretions, yet these 
and probably more supercrescences productions or excretions 
may bee observed in England.” He proceeded to give a 
descriptive list of those which had come under his notice; 
some of them can be easily identified. 
It is said that Dr. Martin Lister (1638-1712), the 
physician-in-ordinary to Queen Anne, was the first to 
observe that certain insects are always associated with 
certain galls. He found gall insects on the Plum, Cherry, 
Vine, etc., and alluded to them as the patellae of these trees. 
