I was going to annex a little draught of the Figure of those Nuts sent out of Devonshire, but chancing to examine Mr. Parkinson’s Herbal for something else, and particularly about Galls and Oak-apples, I found among no less then 24. several kinds of excrescencies of the Oak, which I doubt not, but upon examination, will be all found to be the matrixes of so many several kinds of Insects; I having observ’d many of them my self to be so, among 24. several kinds, I say, I found one described and Figur’d directly like that which I had by me, the Scheme is there to be seen, the description, because but short, I have here adjoin’d Theatri Botanici trib. 16.  Chap. 2.  There groweth at the roots of old Oaks in the Spring-time, and semetimes also in the very heat of Summer, a peculiar kind of Mushrom or Excrescence, call’d Uva Quercina_, swelling out of the Earth, many growing one close unto another, of the fashion of a Grape, and therefore took the name, the Oak-Grape, and is of a Purplish colour on the outside, and white within like Milk, and in the end of Summer becometh hard and woody._ Whether this be the very same kind, I cannot affirm, but both the Picture and Description come very neer to that I have, but that he seems not to take notice of the hollowness or Worm, for which ’tis most observable.  And therefore ’tis very likely, if men did but take notice, they might find very many differing Species of these Nuts, Ovaries, or Matrixes, and all of them to have much the same designation and office.  And I have very lately found several kinds of Excrescencies on Trees and Shrubs, which having endured the Winter, upon opening them, I found most of them to contain little Worms, but dead, those things that contain’d them being wither’d and dry.

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Observ.  XLIV. Of the tufted or Brush-horn’d Gnat_._

This little creature was one of those multitudes that fill our English air all the time that warm weather lasts, and is exactly of the shape of that I observ’d to be generated and hatch’d out of those little Insects that wriggle up and down in Rain-water.  But, though many were of this form, yet I observ’d others to be of quite other kinds; nor were all of this or the other kind generated out of Water Insects; for whereas I observ’d that those that proceeded from those Insects were at their full growth, I have also found multitudes of the same shape, but much smaller and tenderer seeming to be very young ones, creep up and down upon the leaves of Trees, and flying up and down in small clusters, in places very remote from water; and this Spring, I observ’d one day, when the Wind was very calm, and the afternoon very fair, and pretty warm, though it had for a long time been very cold weather, and the wind continued still in the East, several small swarms of them playing to and fro in little clouds in the Sun, each of which were not a tenth part of the bigness of one of these I here have delineated, though very much of the same shape, which makes me ghess, that each of these swarms might be the of-spring of one onely Gnat, which had been hoorded up in some safe repository all this Winter by some provident Parent, and were now, by the warmth of the Spring-air, hatch’d into little Flies.