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sexual organs of plants or the fact of their fecundation, nevertheless 

 seeing them at certain periods of their life clothed with elegant flowers, 

 perfumed with various essences, distilling delicious nectars, all radiant 

 with glory, as if prepared for some ceremony of proportionate impor- 

 tance, they judged by the rules of common sense and analogy that this 

 was the period of their loves, and that there must be amongst them all, 

 according to the laws of nature, a male and a female. Thus, with regard 

 to the date tree, the Babylonians, either imagining or finding by expe- 

 rience that the great distance of the male was often an impediment to 

 the fecundity of the female, they suspended to the latter male flowers 

 brought from a distance; and they believed that the fertilizing power of 

 these male flowers resided in the small flies which they harbored, and 

 which, introducing themselves into the female flowers, caused them to set 

 and to ripen. This operation, called palmification, is still in use, and 

 reckoned necessary for obtaining fruit in the country where the date 

 tree grows naturally. . If we could establish with certainty that this 

 theory of the date tree was current before the facts were known con- 

 cerning the fig, we might well suppose that the earliest Greek culti- 

 vators, seeing the caprifig always sterile (in so far as that the fruit does 

 not become sweet), with a coarse and wild habit, and seeing the quantity 

 of little flies it produces, should have thought that that was indeed the 

 male, and that the fertility of the real fig depended upon it, and that 

 thus taking example from the date tree the custom should have origi- 

 nated of suspending the flowers of the caprifig to the domestic fig tree. 

 But the memory of this custom is even more ancient than that of the 

 palmification of the date tree. This caprification, as it is called by us, 

 is spoken of by the most ancient Greek writers on natural history; it is 

 alluded to by Aristotle, and minutely described by Theophrastus, writers 

 who were not only superior to all others in their philosophical specula- 

 tions, but were very ingenious in their ideas on natural objects and 

 phenomena. 



Aristotle observes that a certain insect is generated in the flowers of 

 the caprifig, which, having become a fly, enters the unripe fruits of the 

 domestic fig and causes them to set, for which reason cultivators always 

 plant the one by the side of the other, or suspend the fruits of the one 

 to the branches of the other. Theophrastus does not confine himself to 

 this bare statement of the practice which prevailed, but discourses at 

 length on the manner in which the little fly could produce this effect, 

 whether by opening or by closing the aperture of the fig. He rejects 

 the second theory and pronounces for the first, saying that the fly by 

 continual nibbling enlarges the mouth of the fig and sucks out the 

 superfluous humors, and that the air penetrating through the aperture, 

 it follows that by its warmth and fermenting qualities the fig sets and 

 ripens. Nevertheless there are races of domestic figs which do not 

 require the aid of the caprifig to ripen, and treating of these, this dili- 

 gent observer is of opinion that this may arise from the quality of the 

 soil or of climate as well as from the particular nature of certain figs 

 which can ripen their fruits without assistance. He believes that a 

 poor dry soil with a northern aspect, the deficiency of moisture in such 

 soil, the cool wind which is usual in such a situation, and even the dust 

 which would cover the fruit and absorb its superfluous humors, would 

 all tend to open the mouth of the fig and produce the same effects which 

 in the other case are brought about by the flies, and that if in Italy and 



