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never becomes black or rots. At any rate, experience is a better guide 

 than words, and a single glance of a practiced eye will tell with cer- 

 tainty whether the fly has been in the fig or not. Now, every variety of 

 fig sheds a certain number of its fruits, some more, some less; and in 

 the opinion of cultivators, the Lardaro, the Chiaja, and the Sarnese 

 would lose all or most of theirs but for caprification. If such were the 

 case, one would naturally conclude that what fruits should fall after 

 caprification would be precisely those in which the fly had not entered. 

 With this view I, one year, set to examining all the figs that had fallen 

 from the Lardaro, the Chiaja, and the Sarnese, all caprified. On July 

 29th (the fall of the fig commences towards the end of this month and 

 the beginning of the next) I collected under the Sarnese sixty-seven 

 fruits, of which thirty-five had the insect; three days after thirty-one, 

 of which twenty-four had the insect; the remainder were black inside, 

 but without any fly perhaps it had got out again. Afterwards I found 

 one hundred and twenty-two fruits with the insect, one hundred and 

 forty-one without. They were of different sizes, pedagnuoli which had 

 first appeared in June, and cimaruoli of July. 



This experiment does not prove, indeed, whether caprification had 

 been of use or not, except that if it had worked as the cultivators 

 believed, we ought at least to have found the largest proportion without 

 the insect, when, on the contrary, those with the insect equaled the 

 others, or surpassed them in number, admitting that the fly had left 

 many. Where I made this experiment I left at a certain distance another 

 Sarnese tree without the caprifig, under which I at several times collected 

 two hundred and forty fruits, amongst which thirty contained the insect, 

 which had come from other trees, although at a distance. I wished to 

 compare the number of fallen fruits of the two trees, but I found it 

 almost impossible to ascertain how many fell and how many remained; 

 and where this could be done the conclusions were fallacious, as it 

 was difficult to find two trees of precisely the same vigor and tempera- 

 ment. Near the one of which I speak was a variety of the other, pro- 

 duced from a seed which had sown itself in the fissure of an old wall, 

 with the fruit rather larger, the peduncle rather longer, the pulp rather 

 finer and whiter. 



On July 24th I found fourteen fruits of the Lardaro with the insect, 

 and twenty-seven without; on the 30th, under several caprified Lardaro 

 trees, I collected one hundred and sixty-eight pedagnuoli (about an inch 

 long), and a great number of cimaruoli. Of the first, sixty-six, with the 

 styles decayed and blackened, contained the insect; twenty -nine had 

 them similarly decayed, but the insect had probably escaped, and sev- 

 enty-three without the fly had not altered inside. Amongst the cima- 

 ruoli some had the insect, some not. On August 2d, fifty-five pedagnuoli 

 with the fly, twenty-five without, and a great many cimaruoli, as before. 

 On August 9th, forty-eight with the insect, fifty-six without; on the 17th, 

 about two hundred with the insect, and as many without. Thus, out of 

 seven hundred and ninety-three fallen figs of the Lardaro, a little more 

 than half (four hundred and twelve) contained the insect; the others 

 (three hundred and eighty-one) did not, and showed no sign of decay or 

 other change. 



