Swanton, E: British Plant-Galls -

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Résumé :
Excerpt from British Plant-Galls: A Classified Textbook of Cecidology

It is said that Dr. Martin Lister (1638 the physician-in-ordinary to Queen Anne, was the first to Observe that certain insects are always associated with certain galls. He found gall insects on the Plum, Cherry, Vine, etc., and alluded to them as the patellae of these trees.

In 1671 he discovered that from some a permanent dye of a carnation-red colour could be Obtained by mixing them with ley Of ashes.

The physician Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694) was the earliest systematic writer on galls. He published in 1686 a treatise, De Gallis, concerning the galls of Italy and Sicily. His disciple was Dr. Derham, Canon Of Windsor, who comments upon Malpighi's observations and his own in the notes to his Boyle Lectures (1711 in which he writes: I find Italy and Sicily more luxuriant in such productions than England, at least than the parts about Upminster (where I live) are. For many, if not most, of the galls about us are taken notice of by him [malpighi], and several others besides that I have never met with, although I have for many years as critically Observed all the excrescences and other morbid. Tumours of vegetables as is almost possible, and do believe that few of them have escaped me. Derham was fully aware that galls may contain parasites, and quaintly remarks: I apprehend we see many vermicules, towards the outside Of many oak apples, which I guess were not what the primitive insects laid up in the germ from which the oak-apple had its rise, but from some supervenient additional insects, laid in after the apple was grown, and whilst it was tender and soft.

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