The Probert Encyclopaedia of Nature

CYNIPS

Cynips is the gall-fly genus of hymenopterous insects remarkable for their extremely minute head and large, elevated thorax. The females are provided with an ovipositor by which they make holes where they deposit their eggs in different parts of plants, thus producing those excrescences which are known as galls. The gall of commerce used in manufacturing ink is caused by the Cynips galice tinctoria piercing a species of oak which grows in the Levant. The Cynips rosae, or bedeguar gallfly, produces the hairy excrescences seen on the rose-bush and the sweet-brier.
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