IN EXTRA-TROPICAL COUNTRIES. 139 



Ficus Carica, Linne.* 



Orient. The ordinary Fig-tree. It attains an age of several 

 hundred years. In warm temperate latitudes and climes a prolific 

 tree. The most useful and at the same time the most hardy of 

 half a thousand recorded species of Ficus. The extreme facility 

 with which it can be propagated from cuttings, the resistance to 

 heat, the comparatively early yield and easy culture, recommend 

 the Fig-tree to be chosen, where it is an object to raise masses of 

 tree vegetation in widely treeless landscapes of the warmer zones. 

 Hence the extensive plantations of this tree made in formerly 

 woodless parts of Egypt ; hence the likelihood of choosing the Fig 

 as one of the trees for extensive planting through favourable 

 portions of desert wastes, where moreover the fruit could be dried 

 with particular ease. Fig-trees can be grown even on the sand-lands 

 of the desert, at least as observed on the Australian south coast. 

 In Greece the average yield of figs per acre is about 1,600 Bis. 

 (Simmonds). Caprification is unnecessary, even in some instances 

 injurious and objectionable. Two main varieties may be dis- 

 tinguished : that which produces two crops a year, and that 

 which yields but one. The former includes the Grey or Purple Fig, 

 which is the best, the White Fig and the Golden Fig, the latter 

 being the finest in appearance but not in quality. The main variety, 

 which bears only one crop a year, supplies the greatest quantity of 

 figs for drying, among which the Marseillaise and Bellonne are con- 

 sidered the best. The Barnisote and the Aubique produce delicious 

 large fruits, but they must be dried with fire-heat, and are usually 

 consumed fresh. The ordinary drying is effected in the sun. For 

 remarks on this and other points concerning the Fig, the valuable 

 tract recently published by the Rev. Dr. Bleasdale should be con- 

 sulted. The first crop of figs grows on wood of the preceding year ; 

 the last crop however on wood of the current year. Varieties of 

 particular excellence are known from Genoa, Savoy, Malaga, 

 Andalusia. 



Ficus columnaris, Moore and Mueller. 



The Banyan-tree of Lord Howe's Island, therefore extra-tropical. 

 One of the most magnificent productions in the whole empire of 

 plants. Mr. Fitzgerald, a visitor to the island, remarks that the 

 pendulous air -roots, when they touch the ground, gradually swell 

 into columns of the same dimensions as the older ones, which have 

 already become converted into stems, so that it is not apparent which 

 was the parent trunk ; there may be a hundred stems to the tree, on 

 which the huge dome of dark evergreen foliage rests, but these stems 

 are all alike, and thus it is impossible to say whence the tree comes 

 or whither it goes. The aerial roots are comparatively rapidly 

 formed, but the wood never attains the thickness of F. macrophylla, 



