86 THE FIG: ITS HISTORY, CULTURE, AND CURING. 
ribs strongly marked. If such insectiferous fig is cut through it is 
found that its meat is hard and peculiarly solid and possessed of a 
more or less thick but always distinctly violet-colored zone iminedi- 
ately s 1rrounding the flowers. The flower core is much larger than 
in the polleniferous figs. The male flowers are strongly developed and 
so is the zone bearing the gall flowers, several hundreds of which may 
contain Blastophagz in some stage of development. The inhabited 
gall flowers are readily recognized by their plumpness and size, and 
when in an advanced stage of development the dark shade indicates 
that the wasp is near its final size and may be expected soon to issue 
from its confinement. 
This distinction between the insectiferous and the polleniferous 
eaprifigs is of great practical importance to the horticulturist, as it 
enables him to readily recognize the one kind from the other. It is 
only the insectiferous caprifigs which are used in caprification. The 
polleniferous figs which do not contain Blastophage are useless in 
caprification, and should accordingly not be suspended in the Smyrna 
fig trees. 
The above descriptions and notes were made from caprifigs grown 
by Mr. John Rock at Niles, Cal. 
THE FIG AND THE CAPRIFIG. 
It is now generally conceded that the edible fig is in some way 
descended from the caprifig.' The eaprifig is the wild fig of the 
Mediterranean region, though its original home must be searched 
for in the mountain regions of southern Arabia. From its original 
habitat the caprifig tree was spread by cultivation, or at least by trans- 
plantation to other districts, and finding suitable conditions, soon 
established itself as a wild tree in the forests and mountains of the 
respective countries suitable to multiplication through seedlings. It 
is now generally known to botanists that the caprifig carries figs which 
contain three distinct kinds of flowers—male, female, and gall flowers— 
allin the same fruit, as will be described lateron. But, besides, itis also 
known? that there exists also a caprifig tree which bears mammoni 
which possess only pistillate and gall flowers, though trees of this kind 
are comparatively very rare. Cuttings taken from either one of these 
1 Both varieties are known as Ficus carica Linnzeus, and belong to the same 
botanical species. 
* Pontedera, p. 175. This female tree he calls Hrinosyce. Gallesio also men- 
tions such tree under the nameof Fico semi-mula, but it is uncertain if he himself 
has seen it. A somewhat similar form of the caprifig is described by Solms- 
Laubach, p. 35, as having grown wild in a garden at Chiaja, near Naples. As all, 
or at least nearly all, other fig species which have been particularly described pos- 
sess such an exclusively female form, it is more than likely that Pontedera’s 
description is correct. Miller and Solms-Laubach assume that the edible fig is the 
female tree ond the caprifig the male tree, which I can only understand to mean 
that the edibie fig is descended from the female tree. 
