Passing from the subject of the varieties of our British oak, it now remains to mention a most formidable enemy by which it has of late years been attacked, and so exclusively, that in plantations where may be found the American oaks, the Ilex oak, and Turkey oak trees, it has been the only one subjected to the operations of the new gall pest. It has long been known that our native oaks were subject to excrescences of different forms and sizes, such, for example, as oak-apples, oakleaf galls, oak spangles, &c., all of which were ascertained to be caused by several species of _cynips_; but lately we have to lament the introduction of a new species of the same insect, forming a new kind of gall, which, instead of attacking the backs of the leaves, as does the oakleaf gall, occupies the stem that belongs to the leaf; in fact, the attacked leaves seem to be converted into bunches of galls, as represented in the adjoining figure, which presents an illustration of the new pest. They are hard galls, more or less like the “nut-gall” from Aleppo, of which ink is made, and it will be seen that the little twig supports no less than five galls, in the interior of each of which may be found the maggot or _larva_ of an insect; and, as this is affected at the expense of the buds and leaves, the mode of injury must be obvious, as the new twigs which would have been formed, had there been no galls, would in their turn have produced branches and leaves. Trees thus infested are crippled as though they had been subjected to constant pruning. As much of the natural history of the _cynips_, by which these gall-nuts are formed, as is necessary for our purpose, may be gathered from a paper by Mr. Parfitt, who seems to have well studied the gall insect in Devon, its head-quarters. We quote it from the Journal of the Bath and West of England Agricultural Society for 1861:—