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CAPRIFICATION OF THE FIG. 107 
to escape. These respective insects are male and female of the same 
species known to naturalists variously as blastophaga psenes, Blasto- 
phaga grossorum, or Cynips psenes. The number of female Blasto- 
phagas which may issue from a single profico is often very large. 
I have counted as many as two hundred from one fig, and it is known 
that some varieties of caprifig profichi may harbor as many as 700 
wasps. 
The male insects are the first to hatch and escape; with their 
powerful mandibles or jaws they easily cut through their galls and 
then set to work to liberate the females. Before the latter escape 
they are fecundated, while yet in the gall, by the males. Each gall 
contains only one wasp. The male wasps never leave the fig. They 
are so constructed that they could not very well live outside, and 
even inside the fig they soon perish, their life work having been 
accomplished in liberating and fecundating the females. The females 
do not tarry long in the fig, but soon find their way out through the 
eye of the fig, which has opened sufficiently to let them pass through 
without injury to their wings.' In case the fig has been injured and 
compressed in such a way as to close the eye the wasps will remain 
prisoners until otherwise let out—for instance, by cutting the fig. 
With care and aided by a magnifying glass, we may further follow 
the female Blastophagas as they escape from their old habitation. 
Their first work is to look for figs suitable to lay their eggs in, the 
only object of the wasps now being to propagate their species, it 
being doubtful if they feed at all. As soon as outside of the old 
caprifig the female Blastophaga halts on the outside of the fig and 
endeavors to free herself of a whitish powder with which she appears 
to be literally covered. This powder is the pollen from the anthers of 
the male flowers of the caprifig in which she hatched and with which 
she came in contact when she escaped from the fig. This process of 
cleaning she performs in very much the same way as does a house fly, 
stroking herself with her front legs, bending at the same time the 
head, body, and wings. She never succeeds in getting entirely clean, 
as a large portion of the pollen will adhere in spite of all her efforts. 
But when she considers herself sufficiently clean she flies away and 
lights on a less than half-grown caprifig of the same or some other 
tree. The mammoni or second crop of the caprifig has by this time 
advanced so far in development that its interior flowers are just of 
the proper size and age to suit the wasps.” If there are no such figs 
at hand the wasps will soon perish. Having lit on a mammoni, the 
1In the Baia California species of Blastophaga which inhabits Ficus palmeri 
the wasps do not crawl through the eye of the fig, but cut a round hole below the 
eye and thus escape in the same way as they did from their galls. except that the 
hole made in the fig is larger than the hole in the gall. 
* As has been shown elsewhere, this is not always thecase. if there are no capri- 
figs of proper size the wasp can not lay her eggs. 
