Curious Facts in the History of Insects; Including Spiders and Scorpions. / A Complete Collection of the Legends, Superstitions, Beliefs, and Ominous Signs Connected with Insects; Together with Their Uses in Medicine, Art, and as Food; and a Summary of Their Remarkable Injuries and Appearances.

by Frank Cowan

Cynipidæ—Gall-flies.

In the spring of 1694, some Galls hung down like chains upon the oaks in Germany, and the common people, who had never observed them before, imagined them to be magical knots.[478]

A very old and common superstition is, that every oak-apple contains either a maggot, a fly, or a spider: the first foretelling famine, the second war, and the third, the spider, pestilence. Matthiolus gravely affirms this conceit to be true;[479] and the learned Sir Thomas Browne, in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, has thought it worth his while, with much gravity, to explode it. He, however, while combating one popular error, falls himself into another, for want of that philosophical knowledge of insects which later times have succeeded in obtaining. We pass this by, and hurry to his conclusion: “We confess the opinion may hold some verity in analogy, or emblematical phancy; for pestilence is properly signified by the spider, whereof some kinds are of a very venomous nature: famine by maggots, which destroy the fruits of the earth; and war not improperly by the fly, if we rest in the phancy of Homer, who compares the valiant Grecian unto a fly. Some verity it may also have in itself, as truly declaring the corruptive constitution in the present sap and nutrimental juice of the tree; and may consequently discover the disposition of the year according to the plenty or kinds of those productions; for if the putrefying juices of bodies bring forth plenty of flies and maggots, they give forth testimony of common corruption, and declare that the elements are full of the seeds of putrefaction, as the great number of caterpillars, gnats, and ordinary insects do also declare. If they run into spiders, they give signs of higher putrefaction, as plenty of vipers and scorpions are confessed to do; the putrefying materials producing animals of higher mischief according to the advance and higher strain of corruption.”[480]

Moufet says: “In oak acorns and spongy apples sometimes worms breed, and astrologers presage that year to be likely to produce a great famine and dearth.… It is strange that Ringelbergius writes, lib. de experiment, that these worms may be fed to be as big as a serpent, with sheep’s milk; yet Cardanus confirms the same, and shewes the way to feed them, Lib. de rer. varietat.”[481]

There is a very curious operation performed at the present day in the Levant with one of these Gall-flies, which is termed caprification. The object of it is to hasten the maturity of figs; and the species employed for that purpose is the Cynips ficus caricæ, or Cynips psenes of Linnæus; it consists in placing on a fig-tree, which does not produce flowers or early figs, some of these last strung together with a thread. The insects which issue from them, full of fecundating dust, introduce themselves through the eye into the interior of the second figs, fecundate by this means all the grains, and provoke the ripening of the fruit.

This operation, of which some authors have spoken with admiration, appeared to Hasselquist and Olivier, both competent observers, who have been on the spot, to be of no advantage whatsoever in fertilizing the fig;[482] and scientific men of the present day generally hold that it cannot be of any utility, for each fig contains some small flowers toward the eye, capable of fecundating all the female flowers in the interior, and moreover this fruit will grow, ripen, and become excellent to eat even when the grains are not fecundated.[483]

A curious kind of gall, produced on the rose-trees by the Cynips rosæ, which is known by the name of Bedeguar, has been placed among the remedies which may be successfully employed against diarrhœa and dysentery, and useful in cases of scurvy, stone, and worms.[484]

The galls of commerce, commonly called Nut-galls, are found on the Quercus infectoria, a species of oak growing in the Levant, and are produced by the Cynips Gallæ tinctorum. When gathered before the insects quit them, the nut-galls contain more astringent matter, and are then known as Black, Blue, or Green-galls. When the insects

have escaped, they are less astringent, and are called White-galls. They are of great importance in the arts, being very extensively used in dyeing and in the manufacture of ink and leather. They are the most powerful of all the vegetable astringents, and are sometimes used, both internally and externally, with great effect in medicine. Those imported from Syria are the most esteemed, and, of these, those found in the neighborhood of Moussoul are considered the best.[485]

The gall of the field cirsium formerly enjoyed a very great reputation, for it was considered, when carried simply in the pocket, as a sovereign remedy against hemorrhages. It, no doubt, owed this virtue to its resemblance to the principal sign of this disease, the swelling of the vein.[486]

The galls of the ground-ivy, produced by the Cynips glecome, have been eaten as food in France; they have an agreeable taste, and to a high degree the odor of the plant which bears them. Reaumur, however, is doubtful whether they will ever rank with good fruits.[487]

The galls of the sage (Salvia pomifera, S. triloba, and S. officinalis), which are very juicy, like apples, and crowned with rudiments of leaves resembling the calyx of that fruit, are gathered every year, as an article of food, by the inhabitants of the Island of Crete. This is the statement of Poumefort. Olivier confirms it, and adds: They are esteemed in the Levant for their aromatic and acid flavor, especially when prepared with honey and sugar, and form a considerable article of commerce from Scio to Constantinople, where they are regularly exposed in the market.[488]

The celebrated “Dead Sea Fruits,” often called Poma insana, or Mad-apples, Mala Sodomitica, etc., which have given rise to great controversy among Oriental scholars and Biblical commentators, are produced by the Cynips insana on the low oaks (Quercus infectoria) growing on the borders of the Dead Sea.[489]