ON THE CAPEIFICATION OF THE FIG. 215 



the lower orders, especially to those living in the country, who 

 are more tenacious of their habits and customs, every one knows 

 how difficult it is to get the better of it, especially when it is 

 connected ^^ith the hope or possibility of gain, and is ancient. 

 Now who can say that the custom of caprification did not arise 

 and spread amongst cultivators in some such way? And habit 

 is so great in this class of persons, that often they Avill not see 

 their own loss and the gain of others, preferring to die in their 

 errors, rather than better themselves by the example of others. 



Certain facts, either at first inexplicable or marvellous in 

 appearance, have often given rise to popular opinions, which 

 from the remotest antiquity have come down to us from gene- 

 ration to generation. Certainly, from the sight of the moon 

 springs up at once the desire to know its properties; and at its 

 brilliant and even marvellous aspect every one is naturally dis- 

 posed to grant to it a large influence over the things of this 

 world ; and cultivators of old consult its phases for the periods 

 of confiding seeds to the earth, or felling trees ; from that body, 

 in short, they deduce either the probability or the certainty of 

 good or evil. I myself have no experience on the influence of 

 the moon ; but I believe that among popular credences, suppos- 

 ing them not to be all erroneous, none are more so than this on 

 seed-sowing. In vain, however, would it be to tell the cultiva- 

 tors of their error ; all with one voice cry you down with expe- 

 rience, and you must be silent ; experience being the sensible 

 ground for reasoning on phenomena, there is no appeal against 

 it ; and however great and numerous the proofs you have to the 

 contrary, the general opinion resolutely maintained at length 

 puts you to silence. But the case of the moon, you say, has 

 nothing to do with caprification. But do you believe, that on 

 seeing for the first time the different kinds of receptacles of the 

 caprifig, the insect propagated within them, this same insect 

 afterwards issuing forth and penetrating into the domestic fig, 

 forcing its way from scale to scale of the mouth, in a manner 

 which one would have been at a loss to imagine, — do you 

 believe, I repeat, that this fact would not suggest to your mind 

 some great design of nature to be fulfilled ? And this was 

 observed by the ancient Greeks, a people of lively imagination, 

 who in all natural phenomena, in many plants and flowers, saw 

 secrets, and wonders, and records, and living signs of human 

 affairs. 



It is certain that the practice of caprification came to us from 

 Greece, if we give faith to Pliny, who says that in his time it 

 was in use in the islands of the Archipelago, and entirely vm- 

 known to the Italians, But at what precise time it was imported 

 I am unable to say ; writers on rustic affairs in the thirteenth ' 



