98 THE FIG: ITS HISTORY, CULTURE, AND CURING. 
mature. But nearly all other figs become pomologically ripe without 
necessarily or generally being botanically ripe. Other figs again, like 
the San Pedro, produce a pomologiecally ripe first crop, but the second 
crop, which possesses perfect female flowers, does not become pomo- 
logically ripe, and can become botanically ripe only by pollination. 
The pomological maturity usually indicates and implies a long-con- 
tinued cultivation of the fruit by man, and relates chiefly to eulti- 
vated fruits. Among other fruits besides the fig which attain pomo- 
logical maturity without botanical maturity at the same time we may 
mention some varieties of dates, one variety of pomegranate, the seed- 
less orange, many apples and pears, the common edible banana, the 
pepino solanum of Central and South America, seedless grapes, and 
a number of other fruits and vegetables in which the seeds are 
abortive and have become so partly through the continued asexual 
propagations of the plant and partly from other causes. Botanical 
maturity is attained by all fruits which produce perfect seed, and if 
the fruit is edible it is also pomologically mature. 
But it must be remembered that the fruits here enumerated as 
attaining pomological maturity are in general such as have been 
developed from pollinated flowers. Few other fruits than the fig are 
known to develop without previous pollination. The development of 
the common edible-fig receptacle must therefore be considered some- 
what in the same light as the maturity and development reached by 
a tuber, or by the stems of the sugar cane, ete. Pomological maturity 
merely indicates that the fruit becomes edible, while botanical matur- 
ity means that the fruit has developed fertile seeds. 
SEEDS IN SMYRNA FIGS. 
We have already several times referred to the fact that all edible 
figs may be divided into two distinct classes or types—one which 
when ripe does not necessarily contain fertile seeds and one which 
‘an not become ripe without also containing fertile seeds, as otherwise 
it would not be ripe or mature. There are also other differences. 
The Smyrna figs belong to the latter class, and they always contain 
ripe and fertile seeds. 
But as the cultivated Smyrna fig never contains any male flowers, 
and as caprification with the wild fig is always resorted to in order to 
cause the figs to mature, it is evident that the seeds thus produced 
must, when growing, give us hybrid plants—plants which more or 
less partake of both parents, the wild as well as the Smyrna fig. 
Artificial pollination of figs is no new or remarkable discovery. 
Gasparrini relates how! he repeatedly introduced the pollen of the 
'Gasparrini,1. c., under point No.8. He says he impregnated artificially thirty 
flower heads on a Lardaro fig by introducing into the aperture the pollen of the 
caprifig. In California this experiment was first tried in 1890 by Mr. G. C. 
Roeding. 
