Naturalisation in Extra-Tropical Countries. 225 



best variety, as well for drying as for fresh consumption, is called 

 there the White Adriatic, but also known as the Strawberry-Fig. 

 Dr. Gustav Eisen gives 360 vernacular names of the Ficus Carica. 

 The Barnisote and the Aubique produce delicious large fruits, but 

 they must be dried with fire-heat, and are usually consumed fresh. 

 As regards English literature, sub-varieties are enumerated and their 

 peculiarities recorded in Rees' Cyclopedia by Sir James Smith in 

 1810, in Dr. Hogg's successive editions of his Fruit-Manual and in 

 several other works. The small brown Malta kind is left to dry on 

 the tree. Noire and Precose del Spagne are among the earliest kinds. 

 The ordinary drying is effected in the sun. Ripens occasionally still 

 its fruits in the lowlands of Scotland, where wall-shelter exists 

 [London]. Import during 1886 into Britain, 114,253 cwt., valued 

 211,276. For remarks on this sind other points, concerning the 

 Fig, the valuable tract published by the Rev. Dr. Bleasdale should 

 be consulted. 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, Anda- 

 lusia. For some further information, see among other publications 

 also that of the Hon. the Commissioner of Agriculture, Washington, 

 1878. Seeds of carefully dried Smyrna figs are fit to germinate 

 [Macmahon], Dr. Eisen has published an excellent essay on Fig- 

 culture in California. Figs can also be subjected to fermentation 

 and distillation for alcohol. The black fungaceous deterioration in 

 dried figs of commerce is usually caused by Sterigmatocystis ficuum. 



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 aerial 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 evident 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 rather rapidly 

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

 which produces only a single trunk. He saw one individual tree 

 covering two acres. The allied F. rubiginosa of continental East- 

 Australia has great buttresses, but only now and then a pendulous 

 root, approaching in similarity the stems of Ficus columnaris. The 

 Lord Howe's Island Fig-tree is more like F. macrophylla than F. 

 rubiginosa, but F. columnaris is more rufous in foliage than either. 

 In humid, warm, sheltered tracts this grand vegetable living struc- 

 ture may be raised as an enormous bower for shade and for scenic 

 ornament. The nature of the sap, whether available for caoutchouc 

 or other industrial material, requires yet to be tested. A substance 

 almost identical with gutta-percha, but not like india-rubber, has 



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