104 THE FIG: ITS HISTORY, CULTURE, AND CURING. 
favor of my theory that the mule flowers are in reality only degener- 
ated gall flowers, or perhaps more correctly gall flowers which through 
nonuse are regaining their female nature. If descended from the 
female tree of the caprifig there is nothing to explain why some of 
the flowers are capable of producing seed while others are not. 
The second type, or Smyrna figs, must have descended directly from 
the female tree of the caprifig, their flowers having retained their 
female nature through constant caprification. 
The third and fourth classes are more difficult to explain. They 
have probably descended from a cross between a female Smyrna and 
a caprifig. 
The fifth class is nothing else than a direct descendant from the 
male eaprifig. It retains its male flowers, they having not yet been 
eliminated, while the pomological maturity is simply an improved 
botanical maturity of the caprifig, as it is well known that several 
varieties of caprifigs are edible, though inferior in quality. 
How this cultural evolution and development could have taken 
place is not difficult to understand. The efforts of man to cultivate 
and propagate only the best or what proves most suited to his purposes 
have caused him to gradually discard, first all inferior trees, later all 
inferior varieties, all which either did not suit his taste or which in 
other respects did not prove as profitable as others. This progressin 
selecting varieties has been continued to our own day with nearly all 
kinds of fruit, progressing more or less rapidly, according to the intel- 
ligence and civilization of the cultivators. As the fig is one of the 
oldest of fruits mentioned in the history of the human race, the 
selection and improvement of varieties must have taken place at an 
early date; in fact, at the dawn of higher civilization. No barbarous 
people could evolve the luscious edible fig from the insignificant and 
worthless caprifig, even if we suppose that some chance seedling of 
the female type with superior fruits had been found. The likelihood 
that caprification was invented simultaneously with the cultivation of 
the first edible fig makes it more probable that the civilization of the 
people in question was considerable. The origin of the edible fig of 
the Smyrna kind must be traced to some one of those ancient nations 
of the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris whose history and remains 
archeologists are now beginning to unravel. 
It is possible that the Smyrna race of figs was first originated and 
that later the other class of edible figs was evolved. Or it may be 
that both originated simultaneously, or nearly so, in separate coun- 
tries. The truth and facts of this we will probably never know, and 
our assertions can only have the value of more or less probable 
conjectures. 
The first figs of either class must have been very inferior to those 
now considered our best. The class which descended from seeds of 
the male caprifig must, to begin with, have possessed some male flowers 
