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modern, cannot but be founded on experience, against which no theories, 

 no subtleties of science, are of any avail. Verily does the rise of such 

 ideas in my breast so agitate me, that many times in the midst of my 

 labors my breath has been stopped by the fear that some fact illy under- 

 stood has drawn a veil over my mind. Nor should I ever have ventured 

 to publish this treatise were it not that I thought some consideration was 

 due to the labor I had bestowed on it. Where the love for a subject 

 induces one to undertake a work, the work itself increases that love. 

 Besides there is the hope that, if not the whole, some part of it, at least, 

 may prove useful to science. Of this it behooves others than myself to 

 judge. 



But independently of all such considerations, I may, in courtesy, be 

 allowed some conjectures on the origin of caprification, and how it has 

 become spread among us. The time when it began is entirely unknown, 

 for the first record of it is in Herodotus, who lays it down as a proof of 

 the dependence of the female date on the male, as of the fig on the cap- 

 rifig. Certainly experience proved to cultivators the case of the date 

 tree. Experience, therefore, many would say, proved to the Greeks the 

 necessity of the caprifig for the fig. But it is not everything which our 

 ancestors have handed down to us, by history or by popular tradition, 

 that has been proved by experience, and often has analogy been con- 

 founded with experience. Let us suppose that the case of the date tree 

 was first known, and that some one observing the caprifig, with its 

 coarse, wild aspect, and with its fruits not good to eat, containing the fly 

 withinside, should have conceived the idea that it was necessary for fer- 

 tilizing the fig; this would not have been a demonstration, indeed, but 

 a plausible supposition. And how many theories are there not built 

 upon a few facts generalized by conjecture, analogies, and possibilities? 

 These theories, in course of time, are proved or refuted, and often last a 

 long time in spite of refutation, so difficult is it to turn the mind away 

 from strong impressions and preoccupations, and to turn it away from 

 habit; and habit is of such force that it becomes a second nature, as the 

 old and popular saying has it. And when a maxim is once taught to 

 the lower orders, especially to those living in the country, who are more 

 tenacious of their habits and customs, every one knows how difficult it is 

 to get the better of it, especially when it is connected with the hope or 

 possibility of gain, and is ancient. Now, who can say that the custom 

 of caprification did not rise and spread amongst cultivators in some 

 such way? And habit is so great in this class of persons, that often 

 they will not see their own loss and the gain of others, preferring to die 

 in their errors rather than better themselves by the example of others. 



Certain facts, either at first inexplicable or marvelous in appearance, 

 have often given rise to popular opinion, which, from the remotest an- 

 tiquity, have come down to us from generation to generation. Certainly, 

 from the sight of the moon springs up at once the desire to know its 

 properties; and at its brilliant and even marvelous aspect every one is 

 naturally disposed to grant to it a large influence over the things of 

 this world; and cultivators of old consult its phases for the periods of 

 confiding seeds to the earth, or felling trees; from that body, in short, 

 they deduce either the probability or the certainty of good or evil. I 

 myself have no experience on the influence of the moon; but I believe 

 that among popular credences, supposing them not to be all erroneous, 

 none are more so than this on seed sowing. In vain, however, would it 

 be to tell the cultivators of their error; all with one voice cry you down 



