ON THE CAPEIFICATION OF THE FIG. 193 



bability, but even of certainty, being simple and analogous to 

 what takes place in a great number of vegetables. And that of 

 Tournefort, if one does not entirely give faith to it, has never- 

 theless much of probability, considering that in other fruit-trees 

 the ovary, being j^ierced by an insect for the purpose of depositing 

 its eggs, does not fall off on that account, but ripens like tlie 

 others, only a little earlier. Cavolini's tlieory is derived directly 

 from Linnaeus, only that his explanation of the manner in which 

 fecundation makes the fruit of the fig set is ingenious, and even 

 rational. Admitting then, for the moment, that the fact is as 

 stated by that celebrated naturalist, that is to say, that in certain 

 figs the nutritive juices cannot pass readily from the branch to 

 the fruit (on account, as he says, of the extreme tenuity and 

 curvature of the vessels), unless attracted by the embryo gene- 

 rated by fecundation ; yet he has not shown that in the figs 

 which ripen without caprification these vessels are really less 

 curved or larger. Now we have proved that the structure of the 

 receptacle in all tlie varieties of fig is tolerably similar. And 

 his observation that the fine dust of the soil miglit produce 

 fecundation is now wholly inadmissible. For although towards 

 the close of last century there were some who believed they had 

 obtained perfect seeds furnished with embryos, by fecundating 

 the pistil with very fine charcoal dust, later experience has en- 

 tirely disproved it. As for the virtue attributed by authors to 

 the alkaline salts of the earth, or the phlogiston of the air, as 

 being capable of producing the same effect, it can now no longer 

 be supported without offending the dignity and grandeur of 

 science. Gallesio's opinion is essentially that of Linneeus, as to 

 the importance and the action of fecundation ; and he follows 

 Cavolini in admitting that certain figs require caprification and 

 others do not, for the ripening their fruits. But he does not see 

 the cause of this diversity either in soil or climate, but in their 

 different organization, believing that those figs only which have 

 their flowers apt for fecundation require the caprifig, as well to 

 produce the embryo as to ripen the fruit. Nothing farther can 

 be deduced from Gallesio's work, in which, to my mind, there 

 is great confusion, owing partly to pre-conceived and ill-defined 

 ideas, such as that of the distinction between mule and semi-mule 

 varieties, partly from the author not having precisely stated in 

 what consists the diversity of structure on which he founds his 

 theory, and, above all, from this, that he never himself saw the 

 operation of caprification, nor examined the variety of fig on 

 whicii it is performed. Moreover, his own tlieory, which we 

 have perhaps stated more clearly than he does himself, appeai-s to 

 be in contradiction with itself in the two principal points. For 

 if, in the variety called by him semi-mide, the sap of the branch 



