NEW INTERESTS. 165 



abandoned because of the foregoing failure. Enterprising 

 men could not see why, with the right climatic conditions and 

 the trees themselves abundantly thriving, the fruit should 

 not be made to mature. In the course of the investigations 

 a fact already known, but which had not received the recog- 

 nition it deserved, namely, that the Smyrna fig owes its pe- 

 culiar and popular flavor to the number of ripe seeds which 

 it contains, was brought afresh to notice. The fact was 

 emphasized that these seeds are only to be produced by the 

 fertilization of the flowers of the Smyrna with the pollen 

 derived from the wild, or Capri, fig. It was known that in 

 Oriental regions the natives were wont to bring fruit-bear- 

 ing branches of the caprifig and tie them onto the branches 

 of the edible fig. Whether the natives in the performance of 

 this practice knew it or not, the efficacy of the procedure 

 depended upon the fact that the worthless figs contained nests 

 of minute insects which, covered with pollen, crawled into 

 the flowers of the fig to be fertilized, and upon these minute 

 creatures depended the ripening of the seeds, and hence the 

 palatable quality of the Smyrna fig. It is seen, therefore, 

 that the fig is not a fruit in the ordinary meaning of that 

 term, but a seed pod with its contents. 



Farther investigation revealed the fact that the caprifigs 

 are the only ones which contain male organs, while the flow- 

 ers of the Smyrna contain only female organs. The fig 

 insect (blastophaga grossorum) hibernates in the so-called 

 gall figs of the wild variety, and these and the insects which 

 they contain are essential to the development of the Smyrna 

 fig. Smyrna fig flowers hand-pollinated with pollen from 

 the caprifig had proven as early as 1891 that the desired 

 fig could be produced, and thenceforth it became merely a 



