94 THE FIG: ITS HISTORY, CULTURE, AND CURING. 
Until his researches were made known it was supposed that the 
female flowers turned into galls when stung by the wasps. He 
again proved that the 
distinction existed inde- 
pendent of the wasps, 
which, however, select 
the peculiar gall flow- 
ers as the only ones 
suitable to receive their 
eggs. 
MULE FLOWERS. 
e Under this name I ar- 
range the majority of 
the flowers of that class 
of edible-fig varieties 
which mature their figs 
regularly without the presence of the ecaprifig and its pollen. These 
flowers are, as far as I know, not 
found in the caprifig, nor in any 
other wild-fig species. They are un- 
doubtedly a product of culture and 
must be considered either as modi- 
fied gall flowers (figs. 14, 15), which, 
bereft of the Blastophaga influence, 
have partially regained their original 
structure, but which, just on that 
account, have lost the capability of 
producing galls; or they may be con- 
sidered as degenerated female flowers 
which have lost their fecundity by 
inertion—in other words, by not be- 
ing pollinated for ages, so to say— 
in the same way that many eulti- 
vated flowers have degenerated. I 
am inclined to consider the latter as 
the more probable, though at pres- 
ent no direct proof can be given. 
That the great majority of the flow- 
ers in our edible figs (except the ric. 15.—Five andeveloped mule flowers 
a 
Fic. 14.—Mule flowers from the first crop, San Pedro. This 
crop matures without caprification. 
Smyrna race) are different from the and two developed mule flowers from 
2 i the second crop of Adriatic figs. This 
true female flowers, both in struc- crop develops without caprification. 
ture and nature, is undoubted, 
whether we assign as a cause one or the other of the above theo- 
ries. These mule flowers never reach any botanical maturity, and 
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