3]2 plint's natural history. [Book XV. 



produces a kind of gnat. 79 These insects, deprived of all sus- 

 tenance from their parent tree, at the moment that it is has- 

 tening to rottenness and decay, wing their flight to others of 

 kindred though cultivated kind. There feeding with avidity 

 upon the fig, they penetrate it in numerous places, and by 

 thus making their way to the inside, open the pores of the 

 fruit. 80 The moment they effect their entrance, the heat of 

 the sun finds admission too, and through the inlets thus made 

 the fecundating air is introduced. These insects speedily 

 consume the milky juice that constitutes the chief support 

 of the fruit in its infant 81 state, a result which would other- 

 wise be spontaneously effected by absorption : and hence it is 

 that in the plantations of figs a wild fig is usually aUowed to 

 grow, being placed to the windward of the other trees^ in 

 order that the breezes may bear from it upon them. Improving 

 upon this discovery, branches of the wild fig are sometimes 

 brought from a distance, and bundles tied together are placed 

 upon the cultivated tree. This method, however, is not neces- 

 sary when the trees are growing on a thin soil, or on a site 

 exposed to the north-east wind ; for in these cases the figs will 

 dry spontaneously, and the clefts which are made in the fruit 

 effect the same ripening process which in other instances _ is 

 brought about by the agency of these insects. Nor is it requisite 

 to adopt this plan on spots which are liable to dust, such, for 

 instance, as is generally the case with fig-trees planted by the 

 side of much-frequented roads : the dust having the property 

 of drying up 82 the juices of the fig, and so absorbing the 

 milky humours. There is this superiority, however, in an ad- 

 vantageous site over the methods of ripening by the agency of 

 dust or by caprification, that the fruit is not so apt to fall ; for 

 the secretion of the juices being thus prevented, the fig is not 

 so heavy as it would otherwise be, and the branches are less 



brittle. . . 



All figs are soft to the touch, and when ripe contain grains > 



■3 This insect is one of the Hymenoptera ; the Cynips Psenes of Linnteus 

 and Fabricius. There is another insect of the same genus, hut not so 



well known. . ,, , , , 



so Fe"e observes that the caprification accelerates the ripeness of the 



fruit, but at the expense of the flavour. For the same purpose the upper 



part 'of the fig is often pricked with a pointed quill. 



si « Infant'iam pomi"— literally, "the infancy of the fruit. 



82 Fee denies the truth of this assertion. » Frumenta. 



