390 Sir S. S. Saunders on Fig-Insects 



promoting the distension, maintenance, or maturity of 

 the crop ; the figs subjected to this process affording no 

 proof of the actual presence of the Blastophagce within 

 the same : "ora single Caprificus-tree is planted in the 

 fig-gardens, the passing of the insects to other trees 

 being left to chance " (Ibid, p. 24). 



Count Solms gives various interesting details from 

 different writers respecting the habits of these insects, — 

 of their forcible entrance into the wild figs by squeezing 

 themselves between the scales of the " Ostioliim," where 

 he had himself frequently noticed a quantity of their 

 disrupted wings (" ganze Buschchen solcher abgestreifter 

 Fliigel," p. 20) left there in the persistent efforts they, 

 make to pass this barrier, — of their subsequent de- 

 meanour and oviposition, their bodies being long recog- 

 nisable within the cavity of the fig, — and of the eventual 

 egress of the succeeding brood, still, as he states, from 

 between the scales of the Ostiolum. At Smyrna, how- 

 ever, these scales usually disappear ere then, leaving a 

 free passage instead, which the fig-growers are accus- 

 tomed to plug with a seed-pod of the asphodel, when 

 transferring such infested figs from place to place for 

 the purpose of caprification, an operation they deem so 

 essential that, if these figs fail, as sometimes occurs, 

 they import them from other far distant localities. He 

 also narrates, that when the female Blastophaga effects 

 her egress she " adjusts her wings, places them together, 

 raises them perpendicularly, suns and dries herself, and 

 cleanses her hairy (?) body with her feet to free it from 

 the adhering pollen, wherewith she had become so be- 

 grimed in creeping through the crowning stamens that 

 she seemed powdered all over " — thus effectually dis- 

 posing of the pollen argument ! 



But we do not learn that the Count noticed any 

 of these disrupted wings adhering in like manner to the 

 scales of the domestic figs ; or that he had discovered 

 any such bodies in these, which in the other figs are 

 long recognisable within the cavity ! On the contrary, 

 in adverting to an assertion of Godeheu de Biville 

 (' Memoire sur la Caprification,' Paris, 1755) that this 

 writer " had also found them in ripe figs," the Count 

 significantly adds — which I did not succeed in doing 

 (" was mir nicht gelungen ist ") ! He could not have 

 failed to detect them in Naples, where caprification 

 is revered as a doctrine of faith, had they existed in 



