CHAPTER VIII.
MANUFACTURE OF NUT GALLS BY THE GALL INSECT.
“No present that insects have made to the arts is equal in utility and universal interest, comes more home to our best affections, or is the instrument of producing more valuable fruits of human wisdom and genius, than the gall insect: I mean the fly that gives birth to the gall-nut, from which ink is made. How infinitely are we indebted to this little creature, which at once enables us to converse with our absent friends and connexions, be their distance from us ever so great, and supplies the means by which, to use the poet’s language, we can
“——give to airy nothing
A local habitation, and a name!”
enabling the poet, the philosopher, and the divine, to embody their thoughts for the amusement, instruction, direction, and reformation of mankind.”[[3]]
[3]. Kirby and Spence.
The oak which furnishes this gall is common throughout Asia Minor, from the Bosphorus to Syria, and from the shores of the Archipelago to Persia. It is more frequently seen under the form of a shrub than a tree, rarely attaining six feet in height. Its leaves are smooth, toothed at the edges, of a clear green on both sides, and having a very short leaf-stalk; they fall every year, at the end of autumn. The acorn is two or three times longer than its cup, the latter is sessile, slightly downy, and furnished with small scales. The gall is hard, woody, and heavy, growing out of the buds of young branches, and acquiring a diameter of from four lines to an inch. It is generally round, and covered with knots, some of which are pointed.
This gall-nut is much more valuable if gathered before it is ripe, that is to say, before the insect which produced it has made its escape. In this state it has a bluish appearance, and is unperforated; whereas those from which the insect has departed are lighter in colour and in weight, and are less useful in dyeing.
The Orientals are very careful to gather in this crop at the exact time which experience has proved to be the best, namely, that in which the excrescence has attained its greatest size and weight. If there is any delay, the insect undergoes its metamorphosis, pierces the shell, and appears under its form of a winged insect. From this time the gall-nut no longer derives from the tree those juices which were necessary for the nourishment of the insect, but dries up, and loses the greater part of those qualities which make it valuable in commerce. The Aga of the district takes care that the cultivators traverse frequently, at the time of the harvest, the hills and mountains which are covered with this oak. He has an interest in obtaining galls of good quality, because he levies a tax on the produce. The first gatherings are set aside; they are known in the East under the name of yerli, and are called in commerce black galls, and green galls. Those which have escaped the first search, and which are gathered a little later, are named white galls, and are of a very inferior quality.
The galls from Mossoul and Tocat, and in general those which come from the eastern part of Turkey, are less valued than those from the neighbourhood of Aleppo, of Smyrna, Magnesia, Diarbekir, and all the interior of Natolia.