230 ON THE CULTIVATION OF THE FIG-TREE IN SYRIA. 
weather was fair and calm, and cloudy at the time of their flowering, they 
either would not display their charms, or if they did, they were speedily 
destroyed, for rain and sun and wind are all alike injurious. Neither can 
they find a refuge—like other plants—in pot-culture under glass, for the 
space required for their roots is so great as to put this mode of growing 
them out of the question. Under all these untoward circumstances we 
need not wonder that these beautiful plants found little favour in the eyes 
of the horticultural publie, or that nurserymen should have 50 entitely 
abandoned their cultivation, that many of Mr. Fortune’s finest discoveries 
cannot now be obtained in England. 
In my own case, while convinced of the hopelessness of attempting to grow 
these plants out of doors—in North Staffordshire at all events—and yet 
not caring to throw my plants away, I placed about a dozen of them in the 
central border of the orchard-house at Knypersley, where they have flou- 
rished marvellously, as a glance at the specimens now contributed will 
Suffciently prove. I ought to add that miany of the varieties that are 
already over, or that are not yet in bloom, are equally beautiful. — 
[The blooms exhibited were magnificent when first staged, but in the 
hot dry air of the conservatory, where the meeting was held, they soon 
collapsed], ; 
XLIV.—ON THE CULTIVATION OF THE FIG-TREE 
IN SYRIA. 
Ву В. J. VAN LENNEP, Consul-Gencral to Н.М. the King of Holland at Smyrna. 
i d, for my own convenience, the savage tree not caprificus, 
as the ancients did, but m 
bicis female tree, 
апей by people of this country. It grows 
probably by seeds contained and м г саш of birds, in sah 
tivated stony p aces, or amongst rocks, between shrubs, thickets, &@, 
Ф radon goes, this male tree is not of one uniform kind; 
nore: appear to be as many kinds of male trees as of the cultivated or 
female kind; that is, their leaves are more or less indented, smaller or 
larger, and the colour of their wood is not all the same. Тһе male tree 
