CULTIVATED PLANTS. 169 



The Africaim to the brogiotto nero, which some believe to be 

 also the Emonio of Atheuaeus. 



The Liviana to the pissalutto. 



The Lydia to the^co trojano, very abundant at Naples. 



The Carica to the dottato, common in the Levant, and origin- 

 ally from Cauni in Caria, from whence so many were sent to 

 Greece and called on that account cauni figs and Carica. 



In Tuscany, the varieties of figs cultivated are numerous, many 

 of them due to the days of the Piepublic. Fra Agostino del 

 Kiccio, in his already-quoted manuscripts, gives a selection of 

 thirty-one sorts cultivated in Tuscany in the middle of the sixteenth 

 century, adding that there were many others which he had not 

 included, not having seen them himself. Those of the Medici 

 gardens represented in the drawings of Castello comprise eighteen 

 early and thirty-two late sorts, in all fifty ; and JMicheli in his 

 manuscripts carries the number up to ninety-five. 



Notwithstanding the softness of the wood, and the readiness 

 with which the branches are killed down, the trunk of the fig-tree 

 is remarkable for its longevity. Pliny tells us of an aged wild fig 

 in the forum, which was in a dying state in his days, but which 

 they dared not cut down on account of the tradition that under its 

 shade the wolf had suckled Piomulus and Remus ; that another 

 wild fig in the forum had arisen over the chasm into which Curtius 

 had precipitated himself, and was preserved in memory of that 

 feat ; and that a third similar tree, which dated from before the 

 time of Saturn, was cut down in the year of Rome 260 to erect 

 the building where the vestals were placed. These tales may 

 indeed not be true in their details, but the trees they relate to 

 must have been known to have been several centuries old. 



Prof. Targioni alludes to the practice of caprification, or of 

 the supposed artificial fecundation of cultivated figs by the capri- 

 fico or wild fig, and quotes several writers, ancient and modern, 

 who describe the operation. He does not appear to be aware of 

 the able memoir of Gasparrini, translated iu the 3rd Vol. of this 

 Journal, giving a detailed history of the origin and extent of the 

 practice, and satisfactorily proving its inutility as well by practical 

 experiment as by theoretical ai'gument, and showing at the same 

 time how we must account for the pereeverance with which the 

 inhabitants of certain localities have kept it up from the earliest 

 ages on record to the present day. 



Mulberries, of Asiatic origin, were well known to the ancients, 

 who cultivated them for their fruit, either for eating or as medicinal. 



