4 
the first to appear. Early in May these may be 
seen sprouting like irregularly-formed rosy-tinted 
balls amongst the expanding leaves. 
When fully grown the gall will be found to be of a 
spongy tissue with many cells, each containing, 
according to the stage of development, a whitish, 
legless maggot or a chrysalis, or the perfect cynips • 
and relatively to the date of development we have 
instances from the writings of Gerard and Matthi- 
olus, the well-known botanists, of the same 
attempts being made about 300 years ago to gather 
practical information from coincident states of 
animal and plant life, which are now being 
attempted on a scientific basis, under the descrip¬ 
tion of observation of coincident, phenological, and 
meteorological phenomena. It was considered in 
those days that if, when an oak-apple was broken 
across before it began to wither, its tenants were 
still white worms, “ like a gentel or maggot,” that 
scarcity of food and murrain would ensue; if what 
were called spiders, sickness and mortality ; but if 
a fly or ant was found, plenty was to be looked for, 
or possibly war. _ The inferences are far from being 
as baseless as might be supposed, for the maggots, 
and “spiders” (presumably the wingless pupae) 
being found unusually late, would probably follow 
on the wet ungenial weather, which in those days 
were in their turn followed only too surely by 
fever and scarcity; and the fully developed fly 
points to a sunny, healthy season, good for the 
crops, though the prediction of war seems hardly 
explicable, excepting as an employment not un¬ 
common in those days of the leisure time of 
plenty. The galls of the Turkey oak, or Quercus 
Garris, are of especial interest here, as it was on the 
trees in Kew Gardens that it was found that the 
Turkey oaks were not, as had previously been 
supposed, free from galls in England, and it is only 
a few years since this was first observed. One 
kind of these galls appears with the first growth in 
the spring, and is so exceedingly minute that it is 
scarcely perceptible on the twigs without a magni¬ 
fying glass ; the other form often occurs in the 
acorns which may be found beneath the trees in 
autumn, stunted and divided into several distinct 
chambers, each of which contains a cynips larvje. 
This is conjecturally of the Andricus glandium 
(Giraud), but at present, as far as I am aware, it 
has not been identified on account of the singular 
circumstance of the suspended development of the 
larvse. In the autumn of 1877 a large number of 
infested acorns fell from one of the Lucombe oaks 
