List of the Insect Fauna of the County. 115
reproduction are too complex to be examined or enunciated
here ; still this subject has such a great influence on Cynipid
life—the whole production of oak galls generally—that I
cannot pass on without shortly referring to it, more especially
as we have lately received such important additions to our
knowledge, through the discoveries of Dr. H. Adler, that
a radical reform of our whole nomenclature and arrangement
of the gall-making Cynipidae must follow as a necessary con-
sequence.
It is still a fact that in Cynips (sensu strictu) and some other
genera the male is quite unknown. Hartig satisfied himself
of this fact by collecting large quantities of the gall of
Dryophanta disticha (a species of which the sexual form is
still undetermined); in one year he bred some 10,000 gall-
flies, but he failed to obtain a single male. The late Frederick
Smith made similar experiments on C. Kollari galls, and
I have myself collected these galls by the thousand in the
hope of breeding the long-looked-for male Cynips, but with
no satisfactory result. The circumstantial evidence of par-
thenogenetic reproduction is therefore incontrovertible ; by
this is understood the production of new individuals or fertile
ova by virgin females. Similar phenomena are known to
occur with insects of several orders, and it holds commonly
with many Tenthredinidae, which are so closely allied to the
Cynipidae. From Hartig's time—the father of cecidology—
the Cynipidae included several agamous or asexual genera
besides the usual sexual genera ; amongst the gall-producers
such species occurred in about equal proportions. No expla-
nation of this anomaly was forthcoming. In America
Osten-Sacken and Walsh tried to cut the knot, and the
announcement of the discovery of a male belonging to the
genus Cynips was made. This species (C. spongifica), of which
I exhibit male specimens, is by no means, however, a typical
Cynips as the genus is understood in Europe.32 Mr. H. F.
Bassett33 was the first to adduce any substantial facts in
32 Dr. Mayr puts it in the genus Amphibolips, Reinhard.
33 "On the Habits of certain gall insects of the genus Cynips." 'Cana-
dian Entomologist,' vol. v., pp. 91—94 (May, 1873).