CAPRIFICATION OF THE FIG. 123 
the opinions of the ancient writers were adopted as regards almost all 
points of human knowledge. So also their theories about caprifica- 
tion. For fifteen hundred years after Pliny this process was prac- 
ticed by the cultivators of the soil in the same way as in the time of 
ancient Greece; no one was found to inquire into its nature and value, 
much less to solve the enigma of this the most interesting of all hor- 
ticultural usages of all times. 
In 1583 Ceesalpinus discovered the sexual organs of plants and was 
able to point out their functions, but his discovery bore no fruit as 
regards a better understanding of caprification, and all writers after him 
for nearly two hundred years followed the teachings of Theophrast, 
Pliny, and Plutarch. 
In the early part of the eighteenth century two botanists occupied 
themselves with a closer study of the fig. One of them was Giulio 
Pontedera, who was the first to describe the flowers of the caprifig 
and their structure, though he did not recognize their sexual nature. 
He also studied the fig wasps and caprification, but little suspected 
the true nature and influence of the wasp. Pontedera ascribes the 
effects of caprification to the biting of the wasps, which caused the air 
and light to enter the fig. This is the more remarkable when we con- 
sider how very minute are the wounds caused by even many wasps. 
As seldom more than very few wasps enter one fig, it will be seen 
that the extra air that can penetrate on account of the wasp bites is 
very small indeed, if any at all. 
Another investigator, one of the most prominent botanists of the 
early part of the eighteenth century, was Tournefort. He traveled in 
the Levant and in Greece and made special study of caprification as 
practiced there. Being well acquainted with fig culture in Provence, 
in France, he was well qualified for his time to take up the study of 
saprification. Tournefort had studied Theophrast and tried to explain 
his statement about the lesser value of the caprificated figs, through the 
necessity of drying such caprificated figs in ovens, which caused 
their aroma to disappear. As Solms-Laubach points out, Tournefort 
confounded the wasps with moths which infest dried figs, just as is so 
frequently done in our day. Tournefort describes the three crops of 
caprifig and mentions the two races of edible figs, of which one requires 
caprification, while the other will set fruit without it. The effects of 
caprification he explains in the same way as everyone before him, by 
the biting of the wasps, which causes the superfluous juices to escape. 
Finally, he mentions that a fig which in Provence without caprifica- 
tion produces 25 pounds of figs, in the island of Zea gives 200 pounds— 
a very unsatisfactory statement when we consider the distance of the 
two localities and the uncertainty that the two trees were actually 
of the same variety, not to speak of climate, soil, age, cultivation, ete. 
It was reserved for Linnzeus to discover the true nature of caprifi- 
cation. While previous to his time the nature of the sexes in flowers 
