pointed out, are merely a much modified leaf pubescence. The galls,after the emergence of the adults, become much the worse for weathering and by autumn only fragments of the wool remain upon the trees. The galls often bring great numbers of the insects to maturity; from three galls I obtained 578 adults which emerged from June 9 to June 30. The sexes are produced in about equal numbers. The females, as Bassett discovered, deposit the eggs in the acorns of the scrub-oaks, inserting the ovipositor between the nut and the cup of the very small, young acorns. The gall produced is the form operatola.
Andricus operator form operatola (Bassett)
Plate XXXI, Figures 30 and 31
Cynips q. operatola Riley, 1873, Amer. Nat., VII, p. 519 [Adult not describedi.
Callirhytis operatola Riley, 1895, Sci., I, p. 463. Thompson, 1915, Cat. Amer. Ins. Galls, pp. 21, 30, P1. II, fig. 169.
Andricus operatola Basett, 1900, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc., XXVI, p. 315 [Adult first described]. Dalla Torre and Kieffer, 1902, Gen. Ins., Hymen., Cynip., p. 62; 1910, Das Tierreich, XXIV, p. 550. Buttenmüller, 1913, Bull. Brooklyn Ent. Soc., VIII, p. 103, fig. 8. Vireck, 1916, Hymen. Conn., p. 418.
Andricus operator form operatola Felt, 1906, Ins. Aff. Pk. and Woodl. Trees, II, p. 709.
Callirhytis operator Stebbins, 1910, Springfield (Mass.) Mus. Bull., II, p. 26, fig. 48.
Andricus operator Felt, 1918, N. Y. State Mus. Bull., CC, p. 118, P1. II, fig. 5.
Female.—Generally rufous; median groove faint or lacking; mesopleuræ rather heavily aciculated; second abdominal segment hairy; several wing-veins faint, the terminal portion of the subcosta lacking. Head: rufous, the tips of the mandibles piceous; coriaceous or shagreened; face -and cheeks finely hairy; antennae rufous, irregularly marked brown, 12-13-jointed, third joint the longest, twelfth joint obscurely divided. Thorax: bright rufous, irregularly darker on the anterior parallel lines, at the edges of the thoracic plates, and elsewhere; mesonotum punctate to finely rugulose, with appressed hairs; parapsidal grooves punctate, widely separated and hardly convergent at the scutellum, divergent at the pronotum; median groove very faint or lacking; anterior parallel lines extending half-way to the scutellum; the lateral grooves sinuous, short and smooth; scutellum almost circular, rugose hairy, the fovea- at the base are shining but sparsely rugose, separated by a not broad ridge; pronotum coriaceous; the mesopleurae rather heavily aciculated. Abdomen: bright rufous, brightest basally, darker dorsally and osteriorly, essentially smooth and shining, only microscopically punctate, the second segment with appressed hairs basally and largely over the sides; second segment covering three-quarters of the abdomen, considerably produced dorsally. Legs: rufous, not uniformly so, hairy, the tarsal claws darker, simple. Wings: veins reddish brown, the terminal part of the subcosta faint or lacking, the second abscissa of the radius, the cubitus, and the discoideus very faint; areolet rather small or lacking; the cubitus continuous to the basal vein but hardly apparent; the radial cell open; the first abscissa of the radius angulate, the angle about 120° without a projection into the radial cell. Length: 3.2-3.5 mm.
[Redescribed from material Bassett found ovipositing May 4, 1873, to produce the woolly gall.]
