THE FIG TREE ] 188 



the ripe or nearly ripe caprifig, and flies to the young 

 fruit whose orifice is partly open, its flowers being ready 

 for pollination, enters or squeezes itself through the 

 orifice, often in its hurry losing its wings which remain 

 sticking to the scales which surround the orifice. The 

 male insect is wingless and never leaves the interior of 

 the caprifig where it has developed, but as soon as it 

 comes out of its gall it proceeds to copulate with the 

 female insects just as they are coming out of their own 

 galls, so that these are already fertilized before they 

 leave the caprifig to seek the young figs where to lay 

 their eggs. The female Blastophaga has a short ovipo- 

 sitor with which it perforates the stigma of the pistillife- 

 rous flowers, depositing an egg in each. However, 

 owing to the shortness of the ovipositor, the Blastophaga 

 can only reach the ovule of the gall-flowers whose stigma 

 is very short or abortive. In the perfect female flower, 

 with their long stigma, the egg is laid in the substance 

 of the style, about midway between the stigma and the 

 ovule, and the larva which hatches finding no nourish- 

 ment soon dies, leaving the ovule to proceed with its 

 development into a seed. The Blastophaga having 

 deposited all its cluster of eggs, dies within the young 

 fig. The egg deposited within the ovule of the imperfect 

 female flower, soon developes into a tiny larva which 

 feeds upon the ovule, and sets up an irritation in the 

 nucellum or shell of the ovule, causing it to grow 

 markedly more than it would have done if it where the 

 shell of an ordinary seed, and transforms it into a gall 

 from which in due time the perfect insect emerges. 



The caprifig tree fruits three or four times every 

 year. The first crop, by far the most abundant, appears 

 along with the foliage, in March, coming out of the 

 fruit buds on last year's wood, in the same way as the 

 well-known precocious figs or St. John's figs, and mature 

 in June. This is the crop which furnishes the caprifigs 

 for the fertilization of the edible figs. 



