188 ON THE CAPKIFICATION OF THE FIG. 



may be seen in the vvoi'ks of Bauliin, who lived many years after 

 Caesalpinius. In the beginning- of the last century, Tournefort, 

 travelling through Greece, endeavoured to ascertain the details 

 and the effects of caprification, and whatever he saw and noted 

 down he afterwards published. He follows the opinion of the 

 Greeks with regard to the manner in which tl)e effects may be 

 produced, saying that the caprifig produces tliree kinds of recep- 

 tacles (as we have elsewhere explained in detail) and three gene- 

 rations of the fly in the course of the year ; that there are eatable 

 figs Avhich require the assistance of the caprifig to set ; that the 

 virtue of caprification consists in the bite of the insect, which by 

 enabling the superfluous milky juice to escape, causes the fig to 

 set and ripen, and perhaps also some liquid issuing from the fly 

 itself produces the saccharine fermentation by combination with 

 the juice of the fig. Pontedera afterwards, in making known the 

 structure of the flowers, as well of the caprifig as of the fig, 

 states his belief that the fly acts upon the latter by giving admis- 

 sion into it to light and air. AH which statements differ in little 

 or nothing from the opinions of the Greeks. 



Meanwhile the discovery of Caesalpinius, in the commencement 

 of the preceding century, had more than ever attracted the 

 attention of the learned, many of whom admitted tlie necessity 

 of sexes for the fecundation of fruits, and especially for the 

 purpose of obtaining fertile seeds, yet there were not wanting 

 those who contradicted it, and amongst other grounds adduced 

 the fig as ripening its fruit without fecundation. But the 

 most sensible observers multiplied the facts relating to the 

 fecundation of vegetables ; they ascertained that the female date 

 was enabled to set and ripen its fruit, not by the insect, as 

 Herodotus believed, but by the fertilising powder of the anthers ; 

 and, amongst other remarkable circumstances, this also was dis- 

 covered, that certain animals and vegetables lived under a kind 

 of mutual dependence for the accomplislnuent of the operation. 

 Thus, for example, it was observed that the male flowers of the 

 gourd abounded in pollen, which is their fertilising powder. 

 With this pollen bees chiefly form their wax, and the bee flying 

 from flower to flower carries it from the male to the female 

 flower, which eagerly sucks it up, becomes fertile, and grows 

 into the fruit. These facts and other similar ones having been 

 related and proved, it appeared to tlie learned, and especially to 

 Linnseus, that they explained the whole secret of caprification. 

 This great botanist well knew that the fruit is the enlarged ovary, 

 and that the fig commonly called a fruit is not the ovary, but a 

 receptacle containing the flowers, and capable of enlarging without 

 the assistance of fecundation. Knowing, moreover, by the re- 

 searches of Pontedera that the domestic fig only contained female 



