THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



them and in growing a small quantity o£ good fruit. But this 

 would not do commercially. 



Out in Smyrna, at a certain season of the year, the inhabitants 

 have been picking the Capri figs, and carrying them down into 

 the Smyrna orchards, with the result that minute insects cov- 

 ered with pollen, issuing from the Capri fruit, would enter the 

 Smyrna figs and fertilize them. No one knows how old this 

 process is. Miss Ellen Semple, the ethnogeographer, while study- 

 ing the history of agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin, told 

 me once that she saw this process described by an ancient Greek 

 author. Certain botanists said at one time that this was all non- 

 sense, but Count Solms-Laubach, a famous German botanist 

 living in Italy, studied the question, and proved the correctness 

 of the old legend which had passed into modern practise in 

 Smyrna and elsewhere in that region. 



A man of science living in San Francisco, Dr. Gustav Eisen, 

 worked for a while with George Roeding at Fresno, and from 

 time to time attempts were made to import the insects. In fact, 

 once George Roeding went to Smyrna himself. But all attempts 

 were unsuccessful. The Department of Agriculture at Washing- 

 ton became interested. I was ordered to take up the matter, 

 and in 1898 I visited California with the fig fertilization question 

 very much in my mind. 



As it happens. Dr. Walter T. Swingle, a botanical expert of 

 the Department of Agriculture, was in South Europe at that 

 time on leave. Through Solms-Laubach, he became interested 

 in this question, studied the crops carefully, went to Algeria, 

 and there at a period that he judged to be just right, he picked 

 Capri figs, sealed their openings with wax, and shipped a lot 

 of them to Washington, whence they were forwarded immedi- 

 ately to Roeding at Fresno. I happened to be in Fresno when 

 they arrived. Roeding and I opened them. We found the fig 



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