224 Select Plants for Industrial Culture and 



an object to raise masses of tree-vegetation in widely treeless lands 

 of the warmer zones for shade and fruit. Hence the extensive plan- 

 tations 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 favorable portions of desert-waste, where more- 

 over the fruit could be dried with particular ease. Small cuttings 

 went quite well, chiefly by horse-post, from Port Phillip to the 

 central Australian Mission-stations, a distance as far as from St. 

 Petersburg to the Black Sea, or from Bombay to Thibet, or from Cape- 

 town to Lake Ngami, or from San Francisco to the Upper Missouri. 

 Maintained its high reputation there as a drought-resisting tree 

 during the worst seasons, and grew best of all fruit-trees. Fig-trees 

 can be grown even on sand-lands, at least as observed on the 

 Australian south-coast. In Greece the average yield of figs per 

 acre is about 1,600 Ibs. [Simmonds]. Caprification was also in this 

 work pronounced unnecessary or even objectionable on the strength 

 of researches by Professor Gasparrini and other former observers. 

 Nevertheless the intelligent cultivators in Anatolia, by whom the 

 Smyrna-Figs, the best of all dried figs, are reared, adhere to the 

 caprification-process, used from time immemorial ; moreover they 

 incur much trouble and even sometimes considerable expense for 

 carrying out this procedure, and they contend that without this 

 measure the quite unrivalled quality and extensive maturity of the 

 crop cannot be attained. In California hitherto vain attempts have 

 been made to produce fruit there comparable to the Smyrna-Fig, 

 even on seemingly fitting soil and in proper climatic regions. 

 Therefore the staminate tree was recently introduced into that 

 country, and efforts are made to import also the so-called caprifica- 

 tion-fly (Blastophaga grossorum, formerly named Cynips psenes), 

 as no native insect there or elsewhere seems able to carry on the 

 remarkable symbiosis of that Hymenopter. Possibly a stimulating 

 influence is exercised on the development of the whole compound 

 fig-fruit by this process of fecundation. It might therefore be 

 desirable to institute renewed experiments, unbiased by either 

 earliest traditions or recent discardings, to clearly recognise in the 

 light of progressive science the advantages and disadvantages of 

 the ancient custom of aided pollination also in these colonies, and 

 thereby to complete our insight for raising also here the almost 

 unique Smyrna-figs for exsiccation. Sending of special emissaries, 

 to study this question locally in the Levant, would lead to the 

 speediest and safest results. Two main-varieties may be distin- 

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

 yields but one. The former includes the Gray 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 White Marseillaise and Bellonne, 

 Bourdissotte blanche, Coldi, Signora Blancha et Nero, D'Or de 

 Laura, are considered the best. What in California proved the 



