216 ON THE CAPEIFICATION OF THE FIG. 



century speak of it as a thing practised in some places, and they 

 then knew not how it came amongst us. What appears to me 

 to be interesting is, that it was adopted by us precisely as the 

 ancients had it ; the opinions of our cultivators being the same 

 as those of the Greeks as to its utility. Among country people, 

 the most remote traditions are perpetuated without any altera- 

 tion of consequence. We read, for instance, in Dioscorides, 

 tliat the mandrake has secret virtues, and that it is used by 

 witches. Now in some parts of our country, where the plant is 

 common, the same opinions ai'e held of it. As I was wandering 

 one day about some fig-grounds near Naples, I observed sus- 

 pended to some fig-trees some of those spongy excrescences found 

 on elm-trees, and occasioned by some aphis or pulex for the 

 purpose of propagating within it. Having asked what was the 

 use of it, I was answered by the cultivator that those spongy 

 excrescences were as good as the caprifig to make figs set in 

 abundance, and tliat he had been taught the receipt by his 

 father, who had proved it, and his own experience had con- 

 firmed the advantage of it. This is without doubt an absurdity ; 

 yet the same thing may be read in Theophrastus, and afterwards 

 Palladio, in his chapter on the fig, says, " And if there is none 

 of this" {i.e., of the caprifig), "a branch of wormwood may be 

 suspended, or the excrescences which are found among the 

 foliage of the elm." Such is one of the numerous examples of 

 ridiculous and strange practices in use among the lower orders 

 from the remotest periods ; however contrary to reason, they 

 remain in vogue, and those who believe in them and practise 

 them allege experience in justification. Certainly, as we have 

 already said, experience is the groundwork of all sound reason- 

 ing on phenomena, and we ought on every occasion to follow it ; 

 but in speaking of experience, we must know by whom and in 

 what times it was had. 



Returning to caprification, from which we have somewhat 

 diverged, neither its antiquity nor the experience of cultivators 

 are of any account. I do not wish to disparage the labours of 

 so many great men who have written upon it ; but I only say 

 that they made no experiments ; the ancients, like Aristotle and 

 Theophrastus, relating what was the practice, and Cavolini and 

 Gallesio preoccupied with Linnseus's opinion. 



