DR. G. KING ON THE GENUS FICUS. 37 
candour, which is unfortunately too uncommon, he publicly ab- 
jured his own theory and adopted that of his critic. It was 
during this investigation that Count Solms-Laubach discovered 
the true nature of the gall-flowers. 
F. Carica is not an Indo-Malayan species, but I have referred 
to it at such length not only on account of the interest that 
attends the final settlement. of a long-pending controversy, but 
because this species illustrates in an extreme form the arrange- 
ments which obtain in a large proportion of the species of the 
genus. Count Solms-Laubach went to Java expecting that the 
dimorphism in the receptacles respectively containing the male 
and female flowers which obtains in Ficus Carica would be found 
to be characteristic of other species; and all through his in- 
teresting and remarkable paper in the ‘Botanische Zeitung,’ to 
which I have already referred, the influence of this expectation 
is traceable. As a matter of fact, however, dimorphism in the 
male and female receptacles is the exception, and in hardly any 
other case is it so strongly marked as in F. Carica. 
In the majority of the gall-flowers the pupa of an insect is 
present, and this pupa can usually be seen through the coats of 
the ovary. The pupa, when perfected, escapes into the cavity of 
the receptacle by cutting its way through, or by bursting these 
coats, and fully developed winged insects are often to be found 
in considerable numbers in the cavity of the Fig, the opening by 
which each escaped from the ovary in which it was developed being 
clearly visible. The pupa of the insect must become encysted 
in the ovary of the gall-flower at a very early period; for about 
the time at which the imago is escaping from the ovary the pol- 
len of the anthers of the male flowers is only beginning to be 
shed. It is quite clear therefore that the synchronism of the 
two events—the escape of the insect and the maturity of the 
pollen—is an arrangement of some physiological significance. 
In the species of Ficus in which the arrangement just described 
obtains (and these are by far the majority), the perfect female 
flowers are contained in receptacles which are consecrated to 
themselves alone. In these receptacles the flowers are all perfect 
females; there is not a trace of a male or of a gall-flower. 
These receptacles in many species are perfectly closed from a 
very early stage, and yet, in the majority of cases, every one of 
the ovaries of the females they enclose contains, when mature, 
a perfect seed. The exact way in which these females are fertilized 
