Cynips quercus-ficus Fitch
Surrounding the twigs of white oaks in a dense cluster, resembling preserved figs packed in boxes, each molded to the shape of those pressing against its sides, hollow bladder-like galls of the pale dull yellow color of a faded oak leaf, each gall producing a small black fly with the lower half of its head, its antennae and legs pale dull yellow, its hind shanks dusky and its abdomen beneath reddish-brown, its antennae with fifteen and in the female thirteen joints. Length 0.06, females 0.10, and to the end of their wings 0.14. (Fitch.)
Galls which apparently belong to the above species were received June 10, 1882, from Miss Kath. Parsons, South Lancashire, Mass., who found them on the oak at Breakheart Hill, Saugus, Mass., and several of the gall-flies were bred from them between July 1 and July 13.
Apparently the same kind of galls were found July 20, 1883, in Virginia on Q. alba. From these issued, from August 16, 1883, to April 21, 1884, numerous parasites, belonging to the genera Torymus, Ormyrus, Decatoma, and a Cecidomyid.
The Cynips, which are wingless, differ from those from Miss Parsons in that they were winged. They commenced to issue January 30, 1884, and kept on issuing through the whole of February.
From a few galls, received March 19, 1883, two specimens, also wingless, issued February 9, 1884, and large numbers of wingless insects issued from a lot of galls collected by Mr. Koebele at Meredith Village, N. H., in September, 1883, in the same month. Among these last was also one winged specimen of probably a different species. (Riley's unpublished notes.)
