250 OTTE COMMON FBUITS. 



The various members of the genus Ficus form a very 

 striking feature in most tropical scenery, and travellers 

 reckon the colossal fig-trees of the torrid zone among the 

 greatest blessings with which Providence has favoured 

 these burning climes, the shade of their dense foliage 

 affording an almost impervious shelter. The tenacity of 

 life, with which some are gifted to a most remarkable ex- 

 tent, provides against the world being easily deprived of 

 them, for it is recorded that a specimen of Ficus Australis 

 lived and grew, suspended in the air without earth, in a 

 hothouse for eight months without suffering any apparent 

 inconvenience. 



But while fig-trees of every kind, by their powerful 

 properties for good or ill, have universally commanded 

 the respect of mankind, it is curious that the name of 

 the fruit should have become a very synonym for indif- 

 ference, and be generally associated with ideas of inso- 

 lence and contempt. "When Shakespeare's Charmian says, 

 " I love long life better than figs," the expression only 

 indicates how very much the lady really coveted length 

 of days ; but its being thus used is a concession to the 

 spirit of the age in which the scene is laid those " good 

 old days," when philosophers feasted on figs and con- 

 querors contested for them : and when the word occurs 

 in other parts of his works, it is always with far other 

 meaning, showing that though the fruit itself was at that 

 time probably but a newly-arrived stranger in the coun- 

 try, yet it had already become a familiar practice thus to 

 take its name in vain. The word may not, however, al- 

 ways have been used in an ill sense when employed figu- 

 ratively, for in the case of the first collection of satires 

 in the English language, published anonymously in 1595 

 under the name of A Fig for Momus, the title seems 

 merely to imply an offering, and no disrespectful one, to 

 the laughter-loving god. Some have thought that the fig 

 was rather held in horror in this country, because looked 

 on as a sort of fellow to the stiletto, as a common means 

 of murder abroad ; while others imagine that the word 

 became a term of contempt simply on account of the 

 fruit itself not being generally pleasing to the English 



