464 THE UNIVERSE. 



Insects play a great part in vegetable life ; some bota- 

 nists even consider them as the principal agents in fecun- 

 dity. While working their way among the stamens and 

 pistils, they bear off the fertilizing dust from the former 

 and transport it to the others. The farmers on the banks 

 of the Rhine have even remarked that the orchards in 

 which bees are reared are more productive than those in 

 which there are none. 



In the Levant insects are thought to have a certain 

 amount of influence on the products of the fig-tree. Where 

 cultivation is carried on upon a large scale, they take 

 boughs from the wild species, with numbers of the gall- 

 insects on them which frequent those trees, and lay them 

 upon the cultivated trees. These insects, penetrating into 

 the obscure receptacles of their cloistered flowers, spread 

 upon them the germs of generation. This is the operation 

 that is called " caprification." * 



1 Caprification was considered essential for the fructification of the fig-tree. 

 Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Pliny speak of it. Their accounts appeared fabu- 

 lous, but Tournefort demonstrated their correctness, having had an opportunity 

 of satisfying himself during his travels that this practice still existed in the Le- 

 vant. Linnaeus only saw in caprification a step by which insects transport pol- 

 linic dust from the male flowers of the wild fig-tree to the female flowers of the 

 cultivated species in order to produce fecundation. 



But the part played by the insects is restricted to puncturing the receptacle, 

 a process which stimulates the ripening of the figs, as it does that of our garden 

 flowers, and enables us to obtain a much larger yield of fruit. However, the figs 

 thus punctured are much less finely flavored than those which ripen spontane- 

 ously; but it is asserted that the trees thus operated on bear ten times as many 

 figs as when it is not practised. Tournefort says that a caprified fig-tree yields 

 as much as 280 lbs. of fruit, whilst only 25 lbs. can be got from it when it is not 

 artificially fructified. Ollivier, who also saw this operation practised during his 

 travels in the Levant, and Bosc, the writer on husbandry, look upon it as useless. 



