214 ON THE CAPRIFICATION OF THE FIG. 



6. That thus caprification is useless for the setting and ripen- 

 ing of fruit, and therefore this custom, which entails expense 

 and deteriorates the flavour of the figs, ouglit to be abolished 

 from our agriculture. 



§ 20. Conjectures on the origin of caprification. 



Having now reached the term of my labours, I cannot con- 

 ceal a certain anxiety which has secretly grown up in my mind. 

 I fancy I hear fi-om all quarters that the custom of caprification 

 being of such ancient date, and having been upheld by so many 

 distinguished men of science both ancient and modern, cannot 

 but be founded on experience, against which no theories, no 

 subtleties of science are of any avail. Verily does the rise of 

 such ideas in my breast so agitate me, that many times in the 

 midst of my labours my breath has been stopped by the fear that 

 some fact ill^ luiderstood has drawn a veil over my mind. Nor 

 should I ever have ventured to publish this treatise were it not 

 that I thought some consideration was due to the labour I had 

 bestowed on it. Where the love for a subject induces one to 

 undertake a work, the work itself incrieases that love. Besides 

 there is the hope that, if not the whole, some part of it, at least, 

 may prove useful to science. Of this it behoves others than 

 myself to judge. 



But independently of all such considerations, I may in cour- 

 tesy be allowed some conjectures on the origin of caprification, 

 and how it has become spread among us. The time when it 

 began is entirely unknown, for the first record of it is in Hero- 

 dotus, who lays it down as a proof of the dependence of the 

 female date on the male, as of the fig on the caprifig. Cer- 

 tainly experience proved to cultivators the case of the date-tree. 

 Experience, therefore, many would say, proved to the Greeks 

 the necessity of the caprifig for the fig. But it is not every- 

 thing which our ancestors have handed down to us, by Wstory or 

 by popular tradition, that has been proved by experience, and 

 often has analogy been confounded with experience. Let us 

 suppose that the case of the date-tree was first known, and that 

 some one observing the caprifig, with its coarse, wild aspect, 

 and with its fruits not good to eat containing the fly withinside, 

 should have conceived the idea that it was necessary for ferti- 

 lizing the fig ; this would not have been a demonstration, indeed, 

 but a plausible supposition. And how many theories are there 

 not built upon a few facts generalised by conjectures, analogies, 

 and possibilities ! These theories in course of time are proved 

 or refuted, and often last a long time in spite of refutations, so 

 difficult is it to turn the mind away from strong impressions and 

 preoccupations, and to turn it away from habit ; and habit is of 

 such force that it becomes a second nature, as the old and 

 popular saying has it. And when a maxim is once taught to 



