The Natural History of Selborne

The scarbaei solstitiales begin to swarm in my Brother’s outlet. My Bror this spring turned one of his grass-fields into a kitchen-garden, & sowed it with crops: but the ground so abounded with the maggots of these chafers, that few things escaped their ravages. The lettuces, beans & cabbages were mostly devoured: & yet in trenching this enclosure his people had destroyed multitudes of these noxious grubs. The stalks & ribs of the leaves of the Lombardy polare are embossed with large tumours of an oblong shape, which by incurious observers have been taken for the fruit of the tree. These Galls are full of small insects, some of which are winged, and some not. The parent insect is of the Genus of Cynips. Some poplars of the garden are quite loaded with these excrescencies.